


Manifest

by causidicus



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: (followed by non-platonic bed sharing), Angst, First Time, Gradual Sexual Progress, M/M, Pining, Platonic bed sharing, Pre-s3, Repressed John, Repressed Sherlock, Sexual Confusion, Sleeping in the same bed, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Virgin Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-09 00:49:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/causidicus/pseuds/causidicus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John finds Sherlock's porn.  The discovery shifts the dynamic of their relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you're looking for something canonically consistent with the new season, this story isn't for you. If you're looking old-fashioned Johnlock written before the premiere of S3, read on.
> 
> Thank you so much to CrackshotKate and Allison (wearitcounts) for the beta work.
> 
> SQUEEING OVER THIS GORGEOUS [COVER ART ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3181025) BY [livloveel](http://cupidford.tumblr.com) !!!!!!

The kettle had just boiled when John’s phone beeped in his jacket pocket with Harry's text alert.

_did you not get that cv i sent u?_

Shit.

“Sorry. Early shift at the surgery, forgot. Looking at it now.” He dumped the hot water over his tea, glancing towards the breakfast table for his computer. Not there.

He walked into the living room, squinting into the light filtering through the curtains towards the sofa.  He'd found it between the cushions before. Delicately he moved a stack of yellow newspapers to look underneath, but saw only a petrified crust of toast.

He let cushions drop and glanced towards the overcrowded kitchen table again. _Maybe I missed it_. Using a kitchen roll he lifted up each one of the half-full beakers until his eyes began to sting, giving up to rifle through the cabinets, and as a last resort, the fridge. Beans, eggs, off milk and something that looked like kidneys in pieces in the good tupperware. He closed it sharply. _Christ._

John wandered back into the living room, stopping in front of Sherlock's cracked door.

_He always takes yours._

He hesitated, knocking once before pushing it open.  Sherlock’s computer sat alone on his bare mattress next to a palm-sized spot of sunlight.  

As John crossed the room, his foot caught on a springy heap of bedclothes and he pitched forward, only barely catching himself on Sherlock's chair. _What, is he sleep_ _ing on the floor now?_  With unnecessary viciousness, he kicked the sheets out of the way and grabbed the laptop.

As soon he'd settled down at the breakfast table and opened the computer, he remembered his tea in the kitchen.

A light brown puddle had spread over a good portion of the worktop around the mug. He leaned his mouth down to the rim and sipped enough off the top to pick it up, throwing a tea towel on the mess _later_ and stepping carefully through the kitchen into the living room.  

He suspected that Harry had lied about “moving on” from her current job, but on the phone she didn’t sound like she was drinking. On the contrary, she sounded a bit manic, which worried him enough to ask her to lunch for the first time in years. She’d come out of her twenties – they both had - without a diagnosable mental illness, despite a solid streak of it on both sides of the family.  Other than her alcoholism, of course. _Also on both sides of the family._

He kept his eyes fixed on his cup with each step, watching its contents lap at the rim until a sharp noise from the table drew his eyes upwards. He stopped as though he'd hit an invisible wall, half of his tea slopping loudly onto the carpet.

A video was playing on Sherlock's computer.

John stood rooted to his spot, staring dumbly at the screen until the front door opened and Sherlock’s voice drifted indistinctly upstairs.  

_Fuck._

John slammed the computer shut and returned it to Sherlock’s bedroom, frantically attempting to re-align it with the sunlight on the mattress (it's moved, of course it's moved) before adjusting the pile of sheets and pillows and then attending to the stack of newspapers.  By the time Sherlock’s keys jangled against the lock John was pressing the damp tea towel into the puddle on the carpet, knees of his denims soaked completely through. 

Damn it, _damn it_.

He shoved the tea towel under his cushion and fell into his chair with a book as the door swung open. Sherlock continued his conversation with himself uninterrupted as he strode into the kitchen, dropping something heavy onto the worktop. The smell of mould reached John in the living room.

_That's his project tonight. Maybe-_

Sherlock made a beeline for his room and emerged with his computer, glancing at the wet spot on the carpet then at John as he walked back towards the kitchen.  

John stared at his book, incapable of reading a single word as Sherlock's chair scraped against the the floor and his computer cracked open.

Seconds dragged by, punctuated three small clicks - _t_ _he volume -_ followed by nothing at all.  

John's hands shook when he turned the page of his novel.

_He knows you saw it._

John's heart beat so loud he was sure Sherlock could _hear_ it.

_And now he also knows you tried to hide that you’d seen it._

He forced himself to take a slow breath.  

_"Tell me, John-"_

A vice tightened around his chest, forcing out the air.

_"why you found it necessary to hide what you'd seen, hiding would suggest-"_

The sound of Sherlock's typing drifted in from the kitchen, causing John to go completely still.

_Is he-_

Sherlock's pen scratched against his notepad and he murmured something that sounded like "drowning."

_Not going to mention it._

Relief washed over John, disorienting him. _For a case, maybe. Probably._ He recrossed his legs and turned his attention back to his book. _Done stranger things._

Sherlock's murmur trailed off, leaving the flat in relative silence.

* * *

"The answer is yes.”

It took John a moment to realise Sherlock was speaking to him. "What-” John cleared his throat, heart skipping a little as he turned to face him, “I didn’t ask you anything.”   _  
_

Sherlock wrote something on his notepad.  "I’m referring to the question suggested by the flavour of pornography you observed on my laptop.”

John's face remained neutral, but his stomach dropped through the floor.

“And the answer is yes.” Sherlock turned his attention his screen again.  His spine was as straight as the chair back. “I am."

I am.  He is.  He's-

Sherlock glanced at John.

Gay.

Sherlock’s gay. Sherlock-

_mouth opening against the bare matress, knees on the bedclothes on the floor, hands digging into the arm of the chair as he's-_

Stop.  Stop it.

__cock sliding out of his mouth_ _

Stop.

_Stop._

John realised he'd been staring at the sink and looked quickly back at Sherlock.  His face was utterly devoid of expression.

"It’s fine," John blurted.

“I know.” Sherlock clicked the trackpad twice.

“No."  John shook his head.  "No. I mean,  obviously it's fine. You just.” John stopped. “You never seemed interested, at all-“

“I’m not.”

“-in _any_ body. It’s-"

shocking

"-surprising, is all. Because of _that."_  He lifted his hand in a helpless gesture, then let it drop. _"_ That’s all.”  

Sherlock continued staring at his screen as though he hadn't heard him.

_Something else, anything else, I don't care Sherlock, I don't-_

“You know, you've seen my wank material _loads_ of times, because you steal my laptop _constantly_  and then proceed to tell everyone within ear shot what you saw, so I don’t even-” nevermind, stop talking, _stop talking,_  “what did you even  _do_ with my laptop, anyway, that’s the only reason I was even looking at yours, I didn't want-”  He realised he was speaking loudly and snapped his mouth shut, blinking rapidly at the discoloured spot on the floor where Sherlock had spilled hydrochloric acid a few months ago.

_You've made this worse.  Fix it.  Fix it now.  If you don't-_

“You haven't figured out where it is yet?"  

John glanced up; the corner of Sherlock's mouth had turned the tiniest bit and he ran his fingers over his lips, looking briefly at John out of the corner of his eye.

_He's laughing at me._

The thing constricting around John's ribcage relaxed.

"How would I know what you did with it?"  John was inexplicably close to smiling himself despite the fact that his computer was almost certainly destroyed and Sherlock apparently found it hilarious.  "The ends our appliances meet aren't exactly intuitive most of the time."  

Sherlock leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs in front of him, crossing his ankles.  "You realise it's in your room."

John's face turned hot. “You put it there.” As he said it he remembered very clearly sliding it under his bed himself the previous evening.   _  
_

Sherlock's smile widened, making lines around his eyes look especially deep.  John realised he hardly saw them.  

"Still your fault." 

Sherlock turned to look at him full, on and John couldn't quite place his expression. 

He half-smiled in Sherlock's direction before stretching his arms out in front of him and then coughed, nearly retching. He could taste the mould now. “Sherlock, for Chrissakes-”

Sherlock shot out of his seat.

"What-"

He held out a hand to silence him and buried his hands in his hair, pulling hard, before letting his hands drop and turning to stare at John again. "You're a genius."

Before John could respond Sherlock bolted past him towards the stairs to grab his coat, then returned to shove John out the door.

"Where are we going?" John said, looking down at the stairs to make sure he didn’t trip.

"We're going to prove Mrs. Davies murdered her husband with cough syrup."

* * *

"-but you’d think after getting away with a murder she’d stow away the items in her flat practically _screaming_ cause of death-”

John snorted as they were seated, his ears still freezing from the outside. “Don’t know if most people would make the connection between the cough syrup and the drowning. Or fake drowning, I guess.”  He smiled at the waitress approaching their table.    

“Most people are stupid, especially her. It’s disappointing when a person seems reasonably clever-”

The waitress glanced uncomfortably at Sherlock.

“Hello,” John said pointedly in her direction. Sherlock scowled, but shut up.

“Are we going to be starting out with a bit of champagne? It’s bottomless tonight.” Her smile was pretty.

“Ah." John shrugged. “Ok.” He glanced at Sherlock, who was engrossed in his phone and unresponsive. “Him, too.”

She handed him a couple of menus. “The red one lists our specials, they're all for sharing. I’ll be back in a moment.”

_Sharing_? He looked down at the menu - a pink scroll across the top announced "Angelo's Valentine’s Day Specials." John blinked at it, and then illuminated the screen of his phone. It was indeed February 14th.

Great.  Fantastic.

Sherlock was staring at him now, his mobile lying forgotten the checked tablecloth. John slid the menu across with his thumb over the title.

Sherlock shrugged, eyes snapping over John’s right shoulder.

John watched Sherlock without turning around to see what had caught his attention.  Abruptly Sherlock dropped his gaze and sighed down at the menu.

John leaned his chin into his hand. “What?”

“Wait about ten minutes," Sherlock said as he flipped the red card over.

They scanned the offerings in silence and when their waitress returned, Sherlock ordered a sharing main for himself.

"At least Mrs. Davies could anticipate we'd come round again." Sherlock pulled one glove off. "Though apparently she hadn't thought to leave-"

At the loud gasp behind him, John whipped around in his seat.

A woman’s hand was clapped over her mouth and the man across from her was leaning forward on his elbows, one hand resting on her forearm. After a moment he noticed the open jewellry box sitting between them on the table.

John attempted to keep his expression neutral but had to smile at the look on Sherlock's face. "Bit much,” he conceded quietly.

Sherlock took a sip of his water.  "At least he’s doing it for the right reasons."

John paused with his champagne halfway to his mouth. " _You_ think there is a right reason to get married?”

Sherlock shrugged, staring over John's shoulder again.  “Of course.”

“And what would that be?”

“Money." He picked up his mobile. "Any transfer of property, really."

John leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Don't go get overly sentimental just because it’s Valentine’s Day.”

Sherlock smiled down at his phone as their waitress refilled John’s champagne glass. John looked her in the eye to thank her, glancing at her hands as she walked away. Not married, but she probably had a boyfriend, or at least a date for the evening.  Like most people did. Most normal people.

John ran a hand slowly over his eyes. “God.  I spent Valentine's Day with a murderer.” He let his hand drop and sighed, taking a large swallow of champagne. “I'm turning into you.”

Sherlock looked at him blankly as their waitress approached with their food.  He remained quiet as they ate.  

John's thoughts turned to the video again.

_Does it bother him that you know?_

Sherlock hadn't told him; he hadn't wanted John to know - it must.

_Did he think you would care?_

He spotted the waitress across the room, walking in their direction.

_Do you?_

"Will you be having dessert? They're not technically meant to share, but they’re quite big, I can bring two spoons-"

"This isn’t a date."

The waitress's expression froze; Sherlock was staring directly at her for the first time that evening. He glanced towards John before speaking again.

"He's not gay."

John tried to smile as the waitress stuttered an apology and hurried away for their bill. _That assumption never bothered him, not once, why would he-_

"Recently broke up with her boyfriend." Sherlock turned away from waitress's retreating form and looked John again. "He ended it.  She's sentimental about Valentine's Day. Your chances are decent."

John tried not to show his surprise as Sherlock picked up his phone again.

_For you._

John laughed, a bit strained. “I hate Valentine’s Day, actually.” It was true. “It’s usually a disaster. This has been one of the better ones.” He frowned at the wall. “Actually this was the best one I can remember.”  He looked down, tapping his fingers tapping on the stem of his glass before glancing across the table again.

Sherlock looked surprised.

John cleared his throat, embarrassment creeping over him. “Most interesting one, anyway.”

"Please. That was almost tedious."

It wasn't. Sherlock had loved it.

_You loved it._

John leaned forward, crossing his forearms over each other. "That woman threw an _axe_ at me."

* * *

“- ok then what was a not-rubbish case?  Your _favourite_ case?”

Sherlock looked over his shoulder, his chin already resting on the violin. 

“Oh sorry,” John said, readjusting in his chair. “That’s a bit like splitting the baby, isn’t it?”

Sherlock frowned at him before looking towards the window, playing a high, sharp note.  

"One other question - do you ever play anything with words?  Something I could sing to, maybe?"  

"I'm not a jukebox." 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allison (wearitcounts), thank you for free grammar lessons and bonus Brit-picking! CrackshotKate, thank you for editing as well as patiently un-Americaning what I write (though you've made me forever insecure about the word "sandwich meat.")

Sherlock looked down at the turquoise and gold watch in his hand, pocketing it as John ran his fingers over the brick wall of the townhouse in search of a doorbell.

“I’d have made the insurance claim.”  Sherlock's breath puffed out as white clouds in the dark.

“Sentiment,” John reminded him in a quiet voice as they were buzzed in. 

Their client hurried in to greet them from what looked like a rather large kitchen.  “Mr. Holmes, thank you for coming by so late.”  His gaze dropped to Sherlock’s hands only for a moment before smiling up at them again.  “Would you like something to drink?  I’ve just opened-”

Sherlock unceremoniously pulled the watch from his coat pocket, silencing Mr. Wilson as abruptly as if he'd cut his windpipe.  He turned the watch over in his hand a few times before offering to him.

Mr. Wilson stared at it for a moment before gingerly walking forward and taking it into his own hands.

 John shifted on his feet. 

"I, ah.” Mr. Wilson cleared his throat, running his thumb over the face.  “Sorry.  This just; it means quite a lot to me. I know it must seem strange; it’s hideous, isn’t it?"  

John hemmed as Sherlock said, “Yes.”

The man showed no signs of taking offense, or even that he’d heard Sherlock at all.  “I don't know how to properly - oh, sorry, just one moment, please.”

His footsteps echoed around the high-ceilinged room as he strode to a large roll desk and returned brandishing a cheque to Sherlock, who passed it to John without a second glance.  John startled a bit at the number. 

“Um,” John touched the back of his neck, “I think you might have put an extra zero on here-”

“No.”  Mr. Wilson shook his head.  “No.”  He opened his mouth, then closed it again, shrugging.  “It's a bargain, to me.”

John braced for an awful comment from Sherlock about the watch, but he didn’t say a word.   It was rare restraint for him.

Almost immediately after Mr. Wilson had shown them out, John pulled the cheque out of his wallet, looking at the amount once more to make sure he hadn’t misread it.  "Sherlock, this is going to-"

But Sherlock was already in the middle of the street, waving towards lights at the corner of the cross streets. 

As the cab pulled up to the kerb in front of  the townhouse, the door opened again. “Wait, Mr. Holmes, just a second-” 

Sherlock muttered “Get the cab,” before walking back.

John watched them from his seat, blowing on his hands until Sherlock returned. 

“What did he want?” John asked, rows of well-lit houses passing by as the cab rolled away.  “His other relatives nicking his ugly ties?”

Sherlock said nothing.

"Didn't come to his senses and ask for his money back, did he?"  John was only half-joking.

"No."  Sherlock was looking out the window.

"Ok.  Good.” John tapped his fingers against his leg; Sherlock's reticence was making him a bit nervous.  "What did he want then?"

Sherlock turned to stare directly in front of him as the cab stopped at a deserted traffic light.  "He asked me to dinner."

John turned sharply towards him. 

_I heard that wrong._

"He asked you to dinner?" John repeated as the light changed.

Sherlock shrugged, glancing towards a cyclist on the pavement. 

_I didn’t hear it wrong._

John blinked at him, unable to think of a single thing to say as they turned onto Baker Street.  He was a bit numb as they climbed out.

Sherlock typed out a message on his phone as John jiggled his key in the deteriorating lock, pulling on the handle and hoping it caught quickly.

The thought of Sherlock on a dinner date was bizarre, almost absurd.

_You eat dinner with him._

He paused for a moment before trying to turn the key again.

_Dinner dates are just dinner and-_

Sherlock’s phone rang as the lock clicked open.

“What?” 

The video rippled through his thoughts as they ascended the stairs. 

Sherlock made a noise.  “No.”  Lestrade’s tinny voice spiked in volume before Sherlock hung up on him.

John shut his eyes tightly as he opened the far less temperamental lock to B.  “What was it?” 

_It doesn’t matter whether he said yes or not._

“‘Kidnapped’ teenager.  Boring. It’s always-” 

John's mind wandered again as Sherlock railed against the tedium of kidnapped children.

It was just surprising, was all. 

* * *

Sherlock's eyes met John's in the mirror as he pulled his hair over the sutures on his forehead. 

"Stop it, you'll open them up and bleed all over your suit."  John smoothed his shirt front before grabbing his jacket off the back of his chair. 

Sherlock dropped his hand and flopped onto the sofa. "I'm not doing this, go and tell them I'm not going." 

"Yes you are,” John murmured.  “It's a free advertisement."  He glanced over his shoulder so he could look at Sherlock directly.  "You'll get better cases after this." 

"More kidnapped children; gripping."  Sherlock looked towards the fireplace for half a second before staring out the window. John glanced down at the slipper - a white corner of cigarette box  was peeking out.

John looked up into the mirror again, lightly pressing his hand on the lapels of his jacket.  They were already straight.  “You’ve done a press conference before, haven’t you?” 

“Probably.  Deleted it if I have.”  Sherlock pulled his hair over the stitches again. 

John didn’t correct him this time. “It’ll be fine, Sherlock." 

Sherlock smacked his palms against the cushions sharply, causing John to jump. “Oh, for God's sakes, I’m not-” 

John’s phone buzzed on the table, silencing them both. 

Sherlock remained quiet as John ran his hands over his hair.  “That’ll be the cab.”

* * *

"We'd like to thank Mr. Sherlock Holmes for his truly brilliant recovery,”  Mr. Jones had to speak loudly to be heard over the wind that had picked up that afternoon.  “He is a-”

Sherlock's hair whipped backwards as Mr. Jones spoke, revealing the stitches at his hairline. He lifted his hand halfway to his head before balling it into fist at his side.

John worried for a moment they’d ask Sherlock to say something, but after Mr. Jones finished speaking, Mrs. Jones handed him a present and started clapping, encouraging her husband and reporters to join.

 "Smile," John murmured.

The corner of Sherlock's mouth turned up and he nodded a bit at the reporters.  Someone whistled and the clapping got louder, until Sherlock’s smile had softened into something surprisingly genuine. 

 _He really likes this_.  

Unease crept over John, and he glanced towards Mr. Jones, who was dabbing at his eyes with his fingers.   _That was a quick turn around._  He’d shown up at Baker Street two weeks into the investigation and, with almost no preamble, punched Sherlock so hard and so quickly that he'd fallen into their coffee table on his way down.

Cradling Sherlock's head, John had closely watched his pupils and asked him questions until he was satisfied Sherlock hadn't suffered a serious head injury before looking over at Mr. Jones. He’d made ready to go to him, but Sherlock's hand had gripped his wrist tightly.

John looked at him disbelievingly for a moment before sighing and going for the first aid kit in the bathroom.

When he’d returned, Mr. Jones was kneeling beside Sherlock, holding Sherlock's hand close to him.

"Hey." John's voice was sharp but the man didn't notice.

"My son does have a drug problem, but he's a good boy, a smart boy, he’s a _good person_ , I'm so sorry Mr. Holmes, please-"

Sherlock had watched him, stone-faced, until Mr. Jones had run out of things to say and lurched out of their flat with hardly a word to John.  

John had run his hand through his hair as the door shut, turning to look at Sherlock again.  

Sherlock was already somewhere else, absently wiping away the blood that had dripped into his eye. 

They'd found Oliver two days later.

When John turned back to face the pool of journalists he noticed Sherlock staring at Mr. Jones, as well. 

* * *

The cab ride back was quiet.  John's hand rested lightly over Sherlock's present ("a fountain pen") next to his hip.  

The publicity was a good thing.  Good for business.  Good for Sherlock.

_Loves the attention._

The feeling of uneasiness returned and John looked out the window, squinting into the glare from the sunset.  

Something brushed against his calf and he started violently enough to nearly crush the gift box.  Sherlock had stretched his legs across the floorboard, his ankles crossed inches from John's shoes.

He felt a pinprick of fury at Sherlock's encroachment into his space that quickly melted into disqueit.

When Sherlock checked his inbox that evening, he had seventy-two messages waiting for him. 

There wasn’t much down time after that.

* * *

John walked in with bulging shopping bags to a sight he hadn't seen in a couple of months, that being Sherlock playing his violin in their sitting room.  John suspected he'd solved the case he was currently working on (double murder, he'd been excited), or at a lull where he could spare the time to think at his leisure.

As John was putting the orange juice away, he spotted an oddity among the flasks cluttering the kitchen table.  Abandoning the shopping for a moment, he picked up the bottle and turned it around, eyes widening at the lable.  When he looked up again, he noticed Sherlock watching him from the living room.

Hastily he put the the bottle back and opened another shopping bag.

Sherlock hardly ever drank; never at their flat. 

"If that,” John tilted his chin behind him towards the bottle, “is being used in an experiment,” John cut the tape on a bunch of green bananas and pushed them to the corner of the worktop, “I object. Highly."

As John opened the fridge to put away the sliced turkey meat, Sherlock transitioned to “Happy Birthday.”

John stared at the milk he'd forgotten to check before he'd gone for groceries, his mouth contorting into an odd shape. He rubbed a hand over it before speaking. "My birthday was two weeks ago.” It was a bit shocking that Sherlock had remembered.

Sherlock added a ridiculous flourish to the last couple of lines of the song as John closed the fridge and opened the cabinet with the tumblers, putting about two fingers' worth in Sherlock’s glass and dropping it on the breakfast table loudly enough to get his attention.

Sherlock paused, his violin still held in its proper position as he looked down at it. 

"Come on.” John nodded at the whiskey as he sat himself in his chair. “It's my birthday."  

"It was two weeks ago."

John crossed one leg over his knee and picked up his glass, leaning back in his chair and shrugging.  "I'm not drinking it by myself."

Sherlock sighed loudly, putting his violin on the table and knocking back both fingers before picking up the instrument again.

"Hey," John said as Sherlock resumed playing.  "That's very good stuff.”  John picked up the bottle and crossed the room, pouring him two more fingers.    “Try to enjoy it."  

"The point isn’t for _me_ to enjoy it.”  He transferred his bow to his other hand to drink again, grimacing a bit as he put the glass back on the table. 

John snorted as he poured another one for himself.   "You're about to feel that."

* * *

Thirty minutes later Sherlock dropped onto the sofa, his foot hanging off of the side.  He tilted his head towards John, narrowing his eyes. 

"Forty...two?"

"Some detective you are." 

"You are.  There’s no way you can be any other age."  He was slurring the tiniest bit. 

"Thanks.  I’m forty, actually."  

A look of genuine distress passed over Sherlock’s face and he crossed his arms, looking up at the ceiling and mumbling to himself. 

“Hey.” John snapped his fingers at Sherlock, a bit unsettled.  “Nothing to stick your head in an oven over.”  

Sherlock continued mumbling without acknolwedging him. John caught the word “stupid” and sighed. 

“Is it not enough that you can,” John waved his hand in front of his face, almost knocking over the tumbler on the side table,  “figure out who murdered someone by some scuff on their shoes?  That’s obnoxious enough.” 

Sherlock stared down at his toes.  “Any idiot could do that.”   He was smiling now, John could hear it in his voice. 

“Nope.”  John tilted his glass nearly over his head to get the last bit.  “Mere mortals can’t do that, actually.  Only you can do that.” 

As John put his glass back down on the side table he saw Sherlock turn to look at him again, holding John's gaze this time.

John cleared his throat and refilled his glass.  _How many is that_.  He’d meant to keep count.  He had been keeping count, but he forgot, somewhere.

Sherlock abruptly shot up to his feet, stumbling just a bit before snatching his violin off the table.

After the first few notes, John looked up, his glass frozen at his lips.  "Is that-"

It was.

John opened his mouth, then closed it.  "How do you even know this song? I would’ve thought you’d have deleted it or-"

"Probably."

"Then how-"

“I believe at one point you requested of 'something with words, something you could sing along to.’” 

_I'm not a jukebox._

That had been months ago.  

"Though, you should know that you have at least half of the lyrics wrong, going by your shower singing."  Sherlock missed a note a cursed, restarting the song from the beginning, the sound of it filling the sitting room again.   

Something squeezed John painfully in his chest as he watched him.  He couldn’t even smile.  


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, Allison (wearitcounts) for pointing out the things that were spatially confusing and also for putting commas where I desperately need them. CrackshotKate, thank you for Brit-picking and helping me fix the parts that sucked.
> 
> [your-average-joke](http://your-average-joke.tumblr.com) drew a moment of this story and made it GORGEOUSLY moody [here](http://your-average-joke.tumblr.com/post/94029257256/john-blinked-into-the-darkness-what-time-is)

"He’s sleeping with that Australian, as well."

John snorted and stretched his feet out in front of him, accidently knocking over an empty beer bottle. They’d been watching awful telly for the last three hours accompanied by Sherlock’s nearly ceaseless commentary.

An email alert beeped on John's phone and he checked it, glacing at the time before putting it back on the side table.  "I need to go to bed."

"You’re not in work tomorrow."

"Well, it's," John illuminated the screen of his phone again, "way too close to four a.m.  And I can feel the hangover already."  


Light from the television made Sherlock’s face look like it was moving.  He pulled his knees up to his chest, balancing himself on the balls of his feet in his chair. "Dull."

John hesitated as he passed Sherlock on his way upstairs, lightly touching his shoulder.   “Good birthday.”  His voice sounded strange.  

Sherlock said nothing and John left him alone in the dark living room.

Halfway up the stairs he wanted to walk back down, but forced himself to keep going. He could hear Sherlock talking again as he drifted off.

* * *

John blinked into the darkness.

_What time is it?_

Something squeaked and he whipped his head towards the source of the noise, the sight nearly stopping his heart. There was a silhouette of what he hoped was Sherlock in the doorway; adverts were playing downstairs.  

Sherlock's dark shape moved towards him until he was standing almost directly in front of John, clunking something heavy onto the nightstand.

_He brought me a glass of water._

John stared at it for a moment, confused, before he mumbled, "Thanks," and sat up labouriously, drinking most of it in one pull.

Sherlock stood somewhere around the foot of the bed as John put the glass down, making no move to leave.  John settled under the blankets again with something like anxiety creeping over him.

_He's drunk._ _Hates being by himself.  Just wants-_

There was no chair in John's room.  

John considered this fact for a long moment, then scooted quietly from the middle of his bed to the edge, facing the wall.  

Something about the way the mattress moved made John go completely rigid, and he realised with a shock that Sherlock hadn't sat on top of the bedclothes, he was _under_ them.

_He’s going to-_

The idea was so surreal that he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He waited, completely still and and on the edge of panic.

Nothing happened.

Feeling oddly deflated and embarrassed John adjusted himself - he'd got stiff from keeping so still - and heard Sherlock do the same behind him. 

_He's just drunk.  Hates being alone.  That's all._

When he opened his eyes again there was light in the room and Sherlock was gone.  Needle-like pain pulsed somewhere above his left eyebrow and he pressed the heel of his hand into it before crawling out of bed.  

* * *

“Doctor?”

John cleared his throat loudly and looked down.  He’d written out only half of the prescription. 

“Sorry, got distracted for a moment.”

He finished and tore the blue piece of paper from the pad, handing it to his patient and forcing himself to a smile a bit.  She thanked him and left, closing the door behind her.   

He folded his hands under his chin, staring at his license hanging on the opposite wall before picking up his pen again.

_Sherlock has slept in my bed for the last seven days._

He studied the sentence on the blue pad until his nurse knocked.

* * *

A week later John woke up to a loud rasping noise next to his head. 

_What_ -

When it happened the second time, he couldn't help it, he laughed.  

Sherlock’s eyes snapped opened mid-snore and John rolled away from him, struggling mightily to maintain his composure.

“What?”   Sherlock’s voice was husky. 

“Nothing.”  

Sherlock was silent for a moment before turning sharply onto his side and dragging a heap of the covers with him.  “Shut up.”

“It woke me up.”  Despite his best efforts, a giggle slipped into the last word.

“Shut.  Up.” 

John tugged patiently on the blankets until Sherlock grudgingly yielded them, mumbling something unintelligible.  

On the edge of consciousness, John opened his eyes again.  

_That's the first time we've talked here._

* * *

"Sleep in mine. Yours is exacerbating the thing with your sciatic nerve." 

The door to his office opened and John jumped, shoving his phone into his coat pocket.

"I didn't mean to startle you." The nurse sounded apologetic as she handed him a file. 

He leaned over his desk to take it from her. “My fault, wasn’t paying attention.”  _My flatmate and I sleep in the same bed._

He’d imagined saying this out loud to her compulsively over the past month.

As soon as she left, he pulled out his mobile and read the text message again.

Sherlock wasn’t at the flat when he came home from the surgery.  John watched television by himself until 9:30 before turning it off and going up to his room to change, his heart beginning to beat a little fast as he brushed his teeth and took out his contacts.

He wandered back downstairs, washing the dishes that could've waited and wiping down the worktop before walking into Sherlock's room, pausing in the doorway after he turned on the light.

The bed had been made. 

* * *

"Not the mother." 

John wondered if Sherlock was even speaking to him and waited another few seconds before asking, "How do you know?” 

“She has undiagnosed COPD and on that particular day the lift wasn’t working.  She couldn’t have climbed the steps quickly enough.”   

That was interesting. "So who do you think it is now?"  John yawned.

"Her daughter."  Sherlock’s voice sounded more curious than convinced. 

John's eyebrows rose.  "Isn't she only thirteen?"

He could hear Sherlock shrugging.  "Difficult age.” 

John laughed, guilt stifling it a bit.  “The injuries were ah... brutal, do you-” 

“If she participated, her girl friend was the leader. That one,” he said with a hint of amusement, “quite the little junior psychopath.  Neighbours pets mysteriously go missing, makes a habit out of tormenting her classmates from anonymous email addresses.” 

Sherlock’s cold toe accidentally grazed John's calf as he shifted under the blankets.

“You hacked a thirteen-year-old girl’s email account?” John asked, forgetting for a moment what they were talking about.

“Riveting as you would expect.”  

John snorted softly, then rubbed at his eyes. “I need to go back to sleep, Sherlock.” 

Sherlock made an exasperated noise.  “Why?  You have to wake up again in an hour and a half.” 

Sharp, inexplicable happiness made John's throat feel tight as he pulled the duvet back up and around his shoulders.  He didn't trust himself to talk.

* * *

John opened his eyes, blinking at the back of Sherlock’s shoulder peeking out from under the blanket. He could hear rain on the roof as he rolled onto his back, gritting his teeth against the pain in his shoulder. _Hasn’t woken me up in awhile._

Sherlock didn't sound like he was asleep.

John stumbled out of bed and the bathroom, trying to keep his eyes open against the light as he searched for the paracetamol.  After he'd swallowed the tablets with water from the tap, he rotated his shoulder back and forth in front of the mirror, staring at the lines next his nose, under his eyes.  They always looked deeper at night.

_You're getting old._

The thought depressed him.    


He turned off the light and crawled awkwardly back into bed, lying on his stomach with his head turned towards the wall to see if it would help.

"The weather hurts your shoulder."  John could tell Sherlock was still facing away from him.

"The changes, yeah." John straightened his elbow a few times, careful not to touch Sherlock, leaving his arm uncurled and close to his hip.

There was movement and something blunt and solid brushed up against John's little finger - _Sherlock's knee -_ as the mattress depressed under his groin. 

_He's leaning over me_. 

Sudden pressure next to John's scar caused him to jolt upwards, but Sherlock kept him pinned, his thumbs digging hard enough into the bunched muscle to push John's chest into the mattress. John clenched his jaw and Sherlock squeezed ruthlessly until, abruptly, the knot loosened.

John exhaled audibly into the pillow, floating as Sherlock moved to the other shoulder and repeated the process, working next on his neck. John squirmed when Sherlock's finger brushed against his ear lobe and he realised with horror that he was semi-erect, moving quickly towards fully erect.  After a few more passes though, Sherlock's fingers slid off and he settled back onto his own side without a word.  

John stared at the dark shape of an outlet in the wall, counting his breaths. "Thank you." 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you Allison (wearitcounts) for patiently fixing my grammar (with charts!) and for thought-provoking and always constructive feedback. CrackshotKate, thank you for taking time out of your newly insane schedule to Brit-pick, edit, and point out grievous 221B layout errors that I've made.

As soon as John realised he couldn’t move, his eyes snapped open, watching a large brown mass move up and down with his breath.   _Sherlock’s hair_. John jerked in surprise as an arm squeezed around his stomach, a knee digging into his thigh as Sherlock wrapped himself more tightly around John's middle. 

This was bad. This was really, really bad.

There was a hot and damp spot on his chest where Sherlock was breathing and John noticed with a surreal detachment that Sherlock's erection was pressing into his hip.

 _Push him, he’ll wake up, so what, he’s going to wake up, but if he wakes up_ now _-_

Sherlock’s breath stopped.

An ambulance siren got loud outside the window and faded again before Sherlock carefully extracted himself from John's side.  Drawers quietly opened and closed as John blinked up at a small water stain in the ceiling, his thoughts scattering, his lungs unwilling to inflate properly.  

It was nothing.

He unconsciously touched the spot on his waist where Sherlock’s palm had been and his insides curled.

Suddenly John was drowning.

_Peter King’s hand closing around his wrist and pushing it away after John had reached over--_

John closed his eyes and forced himself to take a deep, silent breath.  Mugs clinked loudly together in the kitchen and John realised he'd accidentally put Sherlock's at the back of the cabinet.

_It's ok._

He exhaled.   

_It's fine._

John took one more breath before pushing the sheets off and walking into the bathroom to shower.

The door of the flat opened and shut as John was shaving and he stood up straighter in the mirror, tension leaving his back that he hadn't realised was there.

As he sipped his tea, he noticed a few flasks on the worktop and glanced towards the table.  A bulging brown folder, half of which was jutting out from the edge, was wedged in the small space that had been cleared for it. John picked up the note on top, trying to make sense of Mrs. Hudson’s handwriting before realising it was a particular client's medical records for which Sherlock had been impatiently waiting.  He hadn't touched them. John glanced towards door of the flat and looked back at the folder with vague unease.  Maybe he hadn’t seen them.  John grabbed his phone off the worktop and sent a text to Sherlock to remind him.

Sherlock’s text alert beeped from his room.  He'd forgotten his mobile.

* * *

When John came back from work that evening and saw no sign of Sherlock, he instinctively looked towards the folder.  It was where he'd left it on the table, clearly untouched.  John tried not to think about it.

He woke up alone the next morning - the duvet was still tucked under the pillow on Sherlock's side. For the first time in over a year, John went on a run before work.

On the third day of Sherlock's absence, John turned onto Baker Street and looked up through the mist towards their living room window, embarrassingly relieved to see that the curtains were closed. He’d left them open.

Lightly, almost anxiously he climbed the stairs and opened the door to the flat, deflating somewhat at the sight of their completely dark and silent sitting room.  _Come and gone out again_.  As John shrugged out of his coat and felt along the wall for the light, he noticed a dark shape on the sofa and went still, half of his jacket still on.  

Sherlock was curled on his side facing away from John, deep and even breath echoing slightly off of the cushions.  He was still in his shoes.  

A ringing started in John's ears.  Quietly, he slipped his free arm back into the coat sleeve and left.

The mist was almost rain now, and it was black outside.   He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and walked fast, keeping his head mostly down.  A man in front of him paused in the middle of sidewalk to pull out his phone and John suppressed a disturbing urge to shove him.  Scream at him.

_Prick. Arsehole._

He clenched his jaw so hard it hurt his teeth as he passed him.

_Fuck him._

He turned onto a densely packed sidewalk, weaving even faster through the foot traffic.

_Fuck you too, Sherlock._

An abrupt, full body impact knocked the wind out of John and sent him stumbling backwards. He realised he'd collided with someone only after glimpsing at a man flat on his back on the pavement, shopping bags still clutched in both hands.

Once he'd regained his balance, he hurried to the man and dropped to his knees to help him sit up, scanning his body for obvious injuries before retrieving a jar of olives that had rolled into a gutter. The man accepted the bottle from him with a mumbled, “Thanks,” directed at the pavement, constantly touching his wallet in his back pocket.

John stared guiltily after him as the crowd swallowed him up, then resumed walking in the opposite direction.  Whatever had been propelling him forward had diminished considerably and he lagged, people jostling past him on both sides until he stopped completely, propping himself up against a monstrous glass skyscraper.  He ran a hand slowly over his wet forehead.

_You’re acting crazy._

He pushed the heel of his hand into his eye and let out a shuddering breath.

_Really crazy._

Exhaustion flooded him, and his hand dropped to his side.

He made his way back slowly, lingering in front of shop fronts until he was staring through the window of Angelo’s, watching a blond ponytail bob as its owner addressed an elderly couple seated at his and Sherlock's spot. She re-tucked the back of her shirt into her trousers and he realised it was the Valentine’s Day waitress. He walked in almost unthinkingly, requesting a seat in her section.

She paused when he accepted the wine list from her. “You were here on Valentine’s Day?”

John smiled. “I was, yeah.”

“Should I bring another menu, or-”

“Oh, no. He’s with the boyfriend tonight.” After he said it he realised that it made the story worse - they had been together on Valentine's Day, after all.  If she noticed, it didn't show on her face.  

John ordered a beer and finished it quickly. 

She glanced at his left hand when she took the glass from him.  “Another?”

He nodded and when she returned, she took a moment to position it precisely in the middle the napkin she'd salted previously.

John cleared his throat. “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?"

* * *

John fixed the collar on his jacket with shaky hands, the first pinpricks of a headache behind his left eye. The wet, fetid smell drifting over from the tower of dishes in the sink wasn't helping ("Awful flatmates, but can't afford to live here without them").

John looked in the direction of the bedroom door, jumping a bit when the cat brushed by his ankle. “So, ah, do I need to lock the door from the inside, or-”

“Locks behind you.” She hadn’t bothered to come out of her room.

John zipped his jacket and for the first time noticed a red wine stain on the hem of his shirt. “Left my card on the worktop.”

“Oh yeah, great. Thanks.”

She wouldn't call. He would, to be polite.  She wouldn’t answer.  He looked at the time glowing softly on the stove display and left. 

Dread crept over him on his quiet walk back to Baker Street, spiking as he reached their door.  He didn't want to see Sherlock.  He didn’t want Sherlock to see him.

The only light on in the flat when he walked inside was the florescent in the kitchen. He went past it quickly, catching a glimpse of Sherlock's face pressed against his microscope.

_Probably doesn’t even notice you’re here._

His foot was on the first step when he heard,  "John."

He stared up at the dark outline of the stairs, irrationally livid at Sherlock.   "Hm?"

No answer came from the kitchen.

John clenched a fist then opened it, stretching his fingers wide apart on his thigh. “Did you need something?”  

Nothing.

Sherlock wanted John in the kitchen. He always did this when he wanted to John to come to him but didn’t want to go through the fuss of asking. John looked up the steps again and considered ignoring him. 

_He’s not going to ask about it - he never does._

John forced himself to turn around, another wave of anxiety almost paralysing him.   _What's wrong with you?_ He averted his eyes when he crossed the threshold into the kitchen, surveying the empty sink and the cluttered, dirty hob and the thin stacks of paper all over the floor before looking towards the table, something turning to stone in his chest when he finally saw Sherlock.

Sherlock looked shocked.      

“Yeah?" John asked, and felt ill.

Sherlock’s jaw moved, mouth tightening as he stared at John.  Through him.

John glanced towards the bottles on the worktop, unable to stand looking at Sherlock anymore.  There was something hot and hard in his throat.   John murmured, “I need to go to bed; I'm really tired," towards the flasks before walking out of the kitchen, the memory Sherlock's expression suffocating him.  

He lay on his bed fully clothed, staring numb and unseeing at the wall until he heard Sherlock's footsteps on the stairs.  He froze completely when Sherlock climbed onto the mattress behind him.  When Sherlock yanked on his shoulder to turn him around,  John smelled cigarette smoke and his stomach plunged.

“That waitress.” Sherlock's voice was stiff.

For a moment, John couldn't respond.  When he did, he heard himself as if from a distance.  “Yeah."

“It wasn’t good.”

John’s heart beat painfully in his chest and his mouth was dry.  He had to swallow to speak. “No, it wasn’t.”

“Why not?”

John stared at the tip of Sherlock's collarbone poking through his t-shirt, watching Sherlock's chest rise and fall, and was suddenly terrified.  “I don’t know.”

Then he was cupping Sherlock's jaw.  Sherlock's chest went still.

Time slowed.

John watched his hand slide down Sherlock's arm as if it were operating independently from him.  A soft noise from Sherlock made John grit his teeth as his palm passed over Sherlock's alien-hard waist, then back up his spine and into his hair, making a loose fist as he looked, for the first time, directly into Sherlock's face.

Sherlock's mouth parted and John stared at it, not able to look away, unable to think about any other thing.  He realised he was shaking.

Sherlock kissed John abruptly.  John was still for a moment, shocked, then surged forward, moving his lips frantically against Sherlock's until the kiss was wet.  Sherlock made a loud, muffled noise as John held Sherlock's head steady between his hands to dip his tongue inside.  Sherlock pulled him roughly closer and John whimpered, wiggling a hand between them to slip it underneath the hem of Sherlock's t-shirt and down his hot skin and into the waistband of his pyjama bottoms and underwear, exhaling loudly against Sherlock when his hand touched thick, wiry hair.

Sherlock shoved John away so suddenly that their mouths made a wet popping noise.

John watched, uncomprehending and still horizontal on the mattress, as Sherlock stumbled out of the bed and out the door, then listened to him make his way unevenly down the stairs.  Something banged loudly onto the kitchen table and a chair dragged against the floor. Then there was nothing.

_He's not coming back up._

The room tilted under John and he couldn't breathe.

_Don't go downstairs._

But he was already out of his bed and staggering down the steps into blinding light of the kitchen.  Sherlock didn't look up from the textbook open on the table in front of him.  His hair was messy and he was breathing through his nose.

“Sherlock."

Sherlock slammed both hands abruptly on the table.  "Shut up. _Don’t talk._ Can't you-”

It was as if Sherlock had slapped him. John walked on autopilot back up the stairs without catching the rest of what Sherlock said.  The ringing in his ears was loud.

_Peter King pushing his hand away, laughing nervously-_

Get out of the flat. Right now.

He shoved shirts and jumpers and shoes into a bag without looking at them.

_Stamford.  He’ll ask what happened.  Say something in the flat is broken - the heating. It’s not that cold._

Sherlock shot up out of his chair and said his name sharply as John walked out of the door, down the stairs and outside again, squinting into the wind towards the corner where they caught cabs at this time of night.

_Doesn't have to be Stamford, anywhere._

He didn't hear Sherlock behind him until a hand closed in an iron grip around his bicep. John whirled around in his grasp.

“Get away from me, Sherlock.” He'd screamed it. The sound echoed all the way down the street. 

"I haven't done that.”  

John stared at him, his body losing some of its rigidity as confusion tinged the edges of his humiliation. "What are you talking about?"  His voice had lost strength, as well. "What haven't you done?"

Sherlock swallowed and focussed over John's shoulder, his lips pressed tightly together.  

As John waited for a response, his befuddlement rearranged itself inexplicably into fear.  What the fuck was-

_"How would you know?"_

All of John's thoughts screeched to a halt. 

Mycroft couldn't have meant that.  It was a joke.  It was-

Sherlock's immediate recoil when John touched him under his clothes.  

John, sixteen years old, freezing completely on his parents’ bed after Katie Herron had slipped her hand inside his boxers unexpectedly.

No. Sherlock gets erections. He watches porn. John had fucked Katie Herron less than a week after the aborted attempt in his parents' room. Sherlock had tried it at some point, of course, when he was curious, at uni, to get evidence, to get high, when he was high, when he was bored, maybe more than once, maybe often, maybe that rich, sappy client what was his fucking name-

Sherlock's lips, dry and awkwardly still against his.  

John blinked and looked down, then at Sherlock again.  Sherlock was staring fixedly at John's feet, running his hands viciously over his naked arms. He was barefoot.  

John looked over at his shoulder at lights approaching the corner, then looked back at Sherlock.  

Without a word John walked past him, the weight of his bag in his hand startling him, then embarrassing him, then he was struggling with the goddamn stuck lock again and _Jesus Christ_ , Sherlock hasn't-

He bit down hard on his lip, making a beeline for the kettle once he was inside their apartment.  

Delete it.  Forget it.  Sherlock can.  You probably can, too.

But his focus shifted from forgetting to the squeaking floorboards in the kitchen, the sound coming closer to him, his hair standing on end when he realised that Sherlock was now standing directly behind him.  When Sherlock took the kettle out of his hands, John’s mind went blank.

John allowed himself to be led into the bedroom again and pushed onto the mattress, Sherlock crawling on top of him.  He felt unmoored as Sherlock kissed him again.  He balled his fists tight next to his sides so that he wouldn't touch Sherlock until he forgot himself, wrapping his arms around Sherlock's cold back and startlingly wide shoulders and kissing him hard until Sherlock's hips jerked against his, rendering John still.  When Sherlock moved again, it was deliberate.  Then it was a rhythm.

Sherlock's mouth disappeared and John opened his eyes, watching between them in a daze as Sherlock pulled his pyjama bottoms down and pushed them towards the end of the bed with his feet. He climbed on top of John again and began rutting against him in short, tiny strokes. John's mouth dropped open and he let Sherlock move, fisting the back of Sherlock's t-shirt in his hands.  Sherlock leaned down to kiss him and John moaned into Sherlock's mouth, his hands sliding up into Sherlock's hair, around his back.  Sherlock's strokes were starting to get stiffer and more erratic.  

The thought made John ache in his jeans.  

After another minute or so Sherlock froze, making a sharp noise as dampness began spreading over John's stomach through his shirt. _Oh my God._ John gathered Sherlock close, holding Sherlock's head between his hands as Sherlock's weight went limp on top of him.  When it was over, Sherlock's hands slid up to cup the sides of John's face.  They breathed together quietly in the dark, their mouths close but not touching.  Then Sherlock shifted on top of him and John was made painfully aware of his own situation and made a pathetic noise, trying to push Sherlock off, desperate to get to the bathroom.

Sherlock didn't move.

“Sherlock, please-”

Sherlock began pulling at John’s trousers and John's response died his throat.   As soon as they were unbuttoned, Sherlock pulled them down and tossed them onto the floor, guiding John’s hand over his own erection and sitting back.

John hesitated a second before tucking his hand inside his pants, closing his eyes tight when he grabbed his prick.   The waistband of his boxers made it difficult to move his hand and he pushed them down and off, biting his lip when he touched himself again.  The noises Sherlock made would not leave him.

The mattress moved under John and there was sudden brightness behind his closed eyelids. _He turned on the lamp_. John's hand stilled on his cock as he felt Sherlock crawl between his legs, followed by the odd sensation of the bed depressing under his neck and shoulders. When he opened his eyes, he was looking directly into Sherlock's.  Sherlock was hovering over John's body, one hand in the space where John's neck met his shoulder, and the other one-

A touch around his hip startled him and he looked down, watching Sherlock’s hand disappear beneath the hem of his shirt, large and hot on his stomach.  John's hand gripped the bedclothes next to his thigh and he pulled his cock unselfconsciously now, fixated on the shifting muscles of Sherlock's forearm.

Sherlock’s hand went lower, directly above his groin, and John snapped rigid, head falling backwards as he made a stuttered, gasping noise.  He came all over himself, his orgasm powerful enough that he could feel it pulsing in his back as the tension drained out of him and he melted into the mattress.  When he opened his eyes again Sherlock was still hovering over him, looking between them at the dark stain on his own shirt.  At John's naked, messy lower half.

John all at once felt overly exposed.  He forced himself to remain still underneath Sherlock until Sherlock carefully shifted from between John’s legs to sit on his normal side of the bed, leaning back against the headboard.  He wasn't looking at John.  

A sudden and hideous fear made John’s voice fast and quiet. “Sherlock, if you didn’t want to-”

“I did.”  

John looked at his face to confirm it.  Sherlock held his gaze for a moment then turned back towards the wall in front of him, his eyes fixed and unseeing.  His palms sat on top of bare legs, and John thought he looked strikingly thin.

They didn't speak and didn't move for another minute, then Sherlock soundlessly climbed out of bed and disappeared into the bathroom.

John wandered back into his room for an extra t-shirt and boxers, a startlingly vivid image of Sherlock cleaning himself cutting into his thoughts when he heard the dull rush of water through the pipes.  As he walked back into the bedroom, Sherlock emerged from the bathroom, awkwardly sidestepping John on his way to the bed.  His face was expressionless.

_He wants to forget about this._

John closed the door to the bathroom and stepped out of his clothes, running the washcloth under the tap before dragging it over his chest. 

It was an experiment, maybe. Indulging a bit of human curiosity.

John scrubbed lower.

Maybe one day we'll laugh about it. 

His stomach muscles involuntarily tightened as he ran the cloth over his pubic hair.

_His mouth.  His eyes._

John bent over the sink, gripping both sides hard and squeezing his eyes shut.

 _You pathetic little fairy. Even after he deletes it he'll read it on you, you should've stopped him, you've completely fucked this up, you've_ ruined _it._

The room was black when John left the bathroom.  He stood still in the dark for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust, then realised the duvet had been turned down on his side of the bed.  

_Don't.  It's a weird habit.  It's the reason this happened._

But he stepped carefully to the edge of Sherlock 's bed and crawled onto his side, settling under the duvet.  Sherlock’s naked shoulder peeked out from under the blanket.

John felt a sudden, desperate need to touch him.  He didn't.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allison (wearitcounts) and CrackshotKate, thank you so much for all of your continued beta brilliance.

“What took you so long?”

“Well, I can’t fly yet.” John closed the door and hung up his jacket, stopping abruptly on his way to his chair to avoid colliding with Sherlock. “You should tell me your- _shit_.” John contorted himself to avoid sitting on the skull, twisting his head in Sherlock's direction. “I told you not to _put_ this where people sit.” Sherlock cut diagonally across the living room without acknowledging him, the two phones John had seen on the couch that morning in his hands.

As John repositioned the skull on the mantle, a text alert beeped and Sherlock stopped in the center of the carpet, staring down at both screens.  He made a frustrated noise and continued towards the far wall as John pulled his own phone out and skimmed the paragraphs from Harry, glad that he had a legitimate reason to ignore them. He turned off the ringer and carefully stepped over small piles of books on the floor to get to the desk.

"Should have used Larsen’s phone," Sherlock murmured in the kitchen, loud enough to be heard in the living room.

John pulled a bulging envelope out of the top drawer and reached back until he felt the handle of his SIG.

Sherlock stopped next to him at the window, then turned around, walking towards the door again. "Stupid. _Stupid_. Silva knows now, that's why he hasn't responded.”

John opened the second drawer from the top to grab his clip and loaded it, turning the gun over in his hand. “When did you send the text?”

“Five-thirty-two.” 

John looked at the time on the cable box. "It hasn't been twenty minutes." He turned the safety off and on, his heart skipping a bit.  "Be patient. Took him an hour Monday."

"Patience is laziness couched in-"

A phone buzzed, not John’s. Sherlock studied the screen in his hand before his eyes met John’s from across the room.

Sherlock bolted towards the door at the same time that John grabbed his keys and Sherlock’s phone off the worktop, locking up quickly and feeling light and sharp by the time he met Sherlock in front of an idling cab. Sherlock opened the door for him and directed the driver to Regent’s Park. 

Sherlock looked down at one of the phones again, then stared straight ahead. “Do you remember-”

“Yes.” John said quietly, and waved Sherlock’s forgotten cell phone in front of him before slipping it into the pocket of Sherlock's enormous coat.

* * *

John blinked up at the black shape of the branches overhead, twisting feebly.  His vision had blown white when his head had connected with the ground and it was difficult to move, though he suspected it was because he'd had knocked the wind out of him and not because he was seriously injured.

Rapid, familiar footsteps approached, a gritty hand cupping his cheek as Sherlock’s face hovered darkly over his, a white floodlight from a tree glowing behind him.

“John?” Sherlock was out of breath.

John groaned a bit as Sherlock helped him sit up. "Where's Mr. Silva?" There was pain just above his left arse cheek, but his leg rolled easily in the dirt. Nothing. “Couldn’t have gone too far.” John had caught Silva’s ankle before he’d slipped away; something had cracked.

Sherlock looked over his shoulder in the direction John had heard Silva scream not long before. “He’s a bit tied up at the moment.” 

John snorted softly as he opened and closed his fists. "That is _awful_ , Sherlock." 

Sherlock helped John carefully manipulate his legs and arms murmuring, “You’re the habitual offender.”

“And you keep claiming you don’t read the blog.” John exhaled slowly through his teeth as he adjusted himself on his arse, which required a bit more delicacy. Sherlock’s hand pressed into his low back to steady him, rendering John totally still for a moment. “One day you might lose your credibility on that front," he said, forcing a smile.

John closed his eyes briefly as Sherlock leaned over his shoulder to brush dirt off of the back of his jacket. They didn't speak as Sherlock meticulously refolded the back collar of his shirt, then his coat.

John stared at the ground as Sherlock drew back a bit to administer the same treatment to his front.  He could smell him.

John's eyes closed as memories from the last time flooded him, almost gasping Sherlock’s mouth crushed against his.

They kissed frantically, wetly, Sherlock's huge, soft lips opening as his tongue pushed into John's mouth. John wrapped his arms blindly around Sherlock's shoulders to pull him closer, both of them nearly losing their balance.

Sherlock's hand fumbled between them and rubbed the front of John's trousers and John exhaled, arching into Sherlock's hand, ignoring the twinge of pain in his hip. Sherlock quickly unbuttoned and unzipped him and reached inside, John going silent when Sherlock's fingers bumped against him, then encircled him. Sherlock ineffectually moved his hand up and down before giving up and yanking John's pants and trousers down around his knees.

John turned away when Sherlock gripped him again, hand sliding over the entire length. “God.” The word was barely audible.

Sherlock drew his palm away to spit in it and then his fist returned, wet now and almost too tight. John dug his fingers into Sherlock's shoulders and looked down, watching Sherlock’s big hand swallow his cock before looking away again, biting down hard on his lip and closing his eyes.  

Sherlock's free hand roamed over John's back as he jerked him off.  John jumped when it slid into his hair and passed over the now enormous lump.

Sherlock froze, the hand on John's cock going absolutely still. "Did you lose consciousness?"

“No,” John hissed.  

A car door opened and closed somewhere far off, indistinct voices carrying over to where they sat.

John and Sherlock bolted upright, John re-buttoning and re-zipping himself with muted panic, roughly smoothing down his shirt front as the first bouncing yellow light appeared from behind a tree, shining on their faces briefly before swinging towards Silva.

Sherlock looked John up and down once before walking up the path to meet the officers, his drawling voice mingling with theirs. 

Another torch momentarily blinded him as footsteps approached. 

"You didn't have to break the poor bastard's legs, John." Lestrade's grinning face came into focus as John's eyes re-adjusted.

Sally followed closely behind, scanning the area with her own torch and ignoring John.  

"Got a pretty big bump for my troubles," John responded mildly, touching the back of his head. As Lestrade shook his hand, he experienced a stab of fierce paranoia that he'd forgotten to button or fasten some article of clothing, or that there was some other tiny, obvious detail that told everything. But that was irrational - Lestrade wasn't Sherlock.

"Larsen was probably with him."  It was Sally, now standing about fifteen feet away, her flashlight pointed down at the ground.  "If he would've called us to meet him here we probably could have got Larsen, too."  

Lestrade sighed, then looked towards Sally.   "Maybe."  

John left Lestrade to placate her, walking up the footpath towards the jumpy cluster of torches. He heard Sally's voice behind him, speaking too quietly to hear.

"I don't know why." There was a sarcastic edge in Lestrade's response. "Maybe Sherlock's losing his touch."

John smiled a bit.

Silva was slumped on a park bench with his hands handcuffed in front of him, an officer advising him of his right to silence with waning patience. There were cut plastic ties scattered everywhere. 

Sherlock stood off to the side with two officers holding notepads, answering their questions flatly.  He hated this part ("leaving a trail of bread crumbs for the idiots"), but the boring, after-the-fact details turned arrests into convictions, and Sherlock knew it.  John was certain after living with him for a year that this was a learned skill; something Sherlock had probably done badly at first.  He wasn't a natural teacher.

Sherlock snatched one of the notepads and pens from the officers, drawing something quickly and pushing it back, snapping, "Here."

He would never tell Sherlock, but his almost jarring professionalism in this regard impressed him as much as his deductions.

A few minutes later Sherlock turned around, looking for him. John held his hand up, waving it until he got Sherlock's attention.  They walked past Lestrade and Sally on their out of the park.

"You know, you might take a holiday," John said as they walked towards the kerb. "Let a DI get promoted."

Sherlock looked away, smiling.

“Though," John added, unable to keep from smiling himself, “you wouldn’t have caught him if I hadn’t twisted his ankle. He was fast."

Sherlock waved for a cab that was stopped at the corner. “You fancy yourself the muscle.”

“Well you do always insist that I tote this around,” John gestured towards the part of his waistband where he kept his gun as a cab approached, “whenever we’re doing something ridiculous. Too tedious of a thing for you to carry yourself?”

They climbed in and Sherlock told the driver their address before he answered. “You’re a much better shot than I am.”

John shifted in his seat, surprised, as the cab merged into traffic. “Well, I am an Army Captain.”

"Army doctor."

"I'm quite good with a knife, too."

John's adrenaline high dropped sharply during the cab ride and, as he trudged up the stairs, he remembered he hadn't slept in almost twenty-four hours. Sherlock hadn't slept in days.

John managed (barely) to change into a t-shirt before shucking his trousers and falling into bed.

The smell of Sherlock sent him abruptly back in the park, watching his cock disappear into Sherlock's fist.  He shifted on his stomach against the mattress and exhaled into the pillow. 

_Don't think about it._

He dropped off into sleep, the memory looming at the edge of his consciousness.

* * *

“John.”

John blinked against blindingly bright light at Sherlock, who was leaning against the headboard with his stockinged ankles crossed and John's computer in his lap. His suit jacket was hanging on the back of the chair.

John turned his head, pressing it into the pillow. “Turn off the damn light.”

“Get me my phone from the kitchen, please?”

“Christ.” John yanked the duvet over his head and turned over. The duvet receded.

“Stop it,” John snapped, and yanked it back over his head.

The duvet disappeared again along with his pillow.

John launched himself into a sitting position, nearly spitting. “Are you trying-”

Sherlock stared at his face, unnervingly direct. The skin under his eyes was a dull purple.

"You need to sleep." John's voice was still annoyed, but more quiet. "You look awful."

Sherlock looked at the computer screen and said, “Please.”

'Please’ twice was unusual. But so was waking John up in the middle of the night to fetch something.

John opened his mouth to tell him to go fuck himself, closed it, then sighed and climbed out of bed.  He stalked to the kitchen and snatched the phone from the table, ignoring his own phone buzzing on the worktop. Tomorrow.

The computer screen was black when John came back into the bedroom and dumped the phone on the bedside table.

“Go to sleep before you get sick," John muttered. Sherlock turned off the overhead light.

* * *

John opened his eyes, exhausted, to the sound of Sherlock calling his name in the dark. Then Sherlock leaned over and light blinded John again. 

John made a noise and pressed his face into the pillow as Sherlock said, “Please get my tea from the living room."

John gripped the sides of his pillow and imagined punching Sherlock hard in the face, then slamming the pillow into his head for waking him up again - _again_ \- two hours after the first insulting errand, and for what? Even Sherlock normally slept after a case, he wasn't doing anything productive, and John was exhausted and sore and his head hurt-

_He's worried that you have a concussion._

John's grip went slack on the pillow as Sherlock asked him blandly a second time. 

It was irrational. But Sherlock knew that - that was why he hadn't asked him any direct questions.

John turned his head in Sherlock's direction, opening his dry eyes and allowing Sherlock to watch his pupils adjust. “I’m going to kill you.”

"Just get my tea first." Sherlock ran a hand roughly over his face and blinked at the wall.

This time he could feel all of the places that had connected with the ground, but he tried to walk as evenly as possible so that Sherlock could cross “muscle weakness” off of his list. Or whatever symptom he was monitoring. 

When he walked back in the room (he'd forgotten the tea mug) Sherlock's eyes drifted wearily to his left hip then back up to his face, raising his eyebrow a bit.

John rubbed the area lightly and yawned. "It's fine. Sore."

Sherlock nodded, then looked in front of him, towards the bathroom.  "And your shoulder?"

His shoulder didn’t hurt at all.  "Hurts a bit," John said, passing a hand over his eyes as he said it.

When Sherlock's thumbs pressed into the meat around the base of his spine, he felt a moment of crushing guilt that was nearly shame. But he didn’t stop Sherlock.

Sherlock worked his back hard and slow, John struggling mightily to stay awake as his hands moved steadily upwards, finally coming to rest on his neck just under John’s scalp. He was almost, but not quite, touching the edges of the bump.   _He knows it's irrational._

Sherlock didn't need sleep often, but he knew his limits and stuck to them. When he didn't, John began to see shadows of things that Sherlock kept buried. Obsessive-compulsive habits. Nervous tics. Doubt. 

John rolled his head gently so that Sherlock's fingers brushed directly over the bump, then back over it it, and again until Sherlock fingers became stiff with purpose, putting pressure on on the sides, using his thumb and finger to measure it, putting his palm flat on top. Feeling the surface of his skull through his skin.

In one inutterably weak moment, John had imagined breaking the skull because Sherlock was talking to it in his room, when he hadn't spoken to John in days. Tonight John had almost crushed the skull and Sherlock hadn't reacted at all. Just a piece of non-essential furnishing now, apparently.

_Just like you will be one day._

Sherlock was leaned over him now, his hand very softly stroking John's hair.  There was something odd in his breathing.  

John closed his eyes.  

_Leave him first._

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much Allison (wearitcounts) for your grammar fixes and (THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT) smut fixes. 
> 
> My Brit-picker is unfortunately swamped with real life at the moment, so if there is a British person reading this who'd like to volunteer, I'd be much obliged. You don't have to edit at all other than the Brit-picking (though of course if you want to, I'd welcome it!) and in exchange I will beta your story or non-fandom things (school papers, cover letters, etc).

John woke up before Sherlock the next day and looked towards the window. Grey outside, but it was still early. John eased out of the blankets without waking Sherlock and hobbled quietly into the kitchen.

The things that had seemed huge and suffocating the night before had retreated from the forefront of John’s mind. As he washed and dried the egg pan, unwrapped the last wedge of butter, and put on some toast, they faded away completely.  

Sherlock wandered out of his room just as John put two full tea mugs on the table, snatching the paper Mrs. Hudson had left in John’s chair before silently seating himself.

John's phone buzzed as he sat down with their plates. He read the text, then put the phone face down on the table and pushed it away from him, scanning the front page for a headline relating to a heinous and hopefully unsolved murder.

Sherlock folded the paper so that it snapped. "Tell Harry to stop texting you." His eyes were still dark underneath.

John took a bite of eggs and shrugged. "I really wish she would."

"So tell her that. Or don't answer."

"Can’t." He finished his tea in one pull and stood up to get more from the kitchen.

"Did you break your fingers in your fall?"

John rested his palms flat on the counter, breathed, and then poured the remainder of the big pot he’d made into his mug. "She needs a car for her new job; doesn't have the money for one so she wants to sell some furniture that belonged to my dad. My mum is not thrilled with this idea." Christ, he'd forgotten to call his mum back. She’d called three times over the past couple of days.

"And this requires near constant input from you why?" John thought from the tone of Sherlock’s voice that he already had an idea. 

"We're co-owners of the furniture. He left most of it to both of us." _In his infinite wisdom._

"So give your permission." Sherlock didn't look up from the paper as John sat down again.  "Your mother’s objection is purely sentimental.”

John fought to maintain a neutral expression, tapping a couple of fingers on the edge of his plate before looking up at Sherlock again. "It's not _quite_ that easy Sherlock-"

"Yes. It is." He licked a finger and turned a page, holding the paper sideways. “She's in possession of valuable, liquidable goods. Harry’s probably not a candidate for favourable financing. You can’t spare it and neither can your mother. Your mother and Harry don’t get on; they’ll be at odds regardless of whether your sister sells the furniture.”

John shook his head, annoyed that Sherlock was mostly correct in his selective assessment of his family dynamics. "You're _really_ not getting this-"

“Was I wrong about something?”

“Incomplete, is the word-”

Sherlock sighed loudly and recrossed his legs under the table, taking a long gulp of tea before pulling out his phone. 

John stared across the table at him. "Right. Apologies for boring you. I’m sure the subject of money would bore me too if I never had to worry about it.” He hadn't meant to say the last part. John had thought it before, many times, but out loud had never once alluded to it.

But Sherlock stared at his mobile and exhibited no sign that he was at all bothered what John had said. None at all.  

Before he could stop himself, John continued, “And it must be nice not to give one single damn about your family-”

"Let's not throw stones, John."  Sherlock looked up at John briefly; his face bland and hard. "You’re manufacturing an emotional conflict because you feel guilt over your lack of attachment to your father."

John slammed his palm down, rattling the plates as Sherlock jerked backwards in his chair.

"I’m not manufacturing anything."

John realised he was leaning across the table and sat back down carefully, keeping his back straight and willing the muscles in his face and neck to relax before he spoke again. “The furniture is old.” Acute embarrassment had lowered his voice. “I think most of it belonged to his grandfather."

_His dad leaning forward on the couch with his hands in his thighs, speaking over the telly that everyone else was discreetly trying to watch._

"He was obsessed with family history and genealogy.  He kept this tombstone in our garage because some cemetery where one of our relatives was buried was privately bought and it was going to be destroyed or something, I can’t remember." John trailed off.  

Sherlock was staring down hard at his phone, but his eyes weren't focussed. 

John didn’t know why he was telling Sherlock any of this. 

He looked away from Sherlock and towards the floor, then out the window, pursing his lips before speaking. "My dad and I weren’t all that close." _Good on you, Sherlock. Right as always._ "But I still have, ah,” his throat tightened a bit, “some reluctance to sell off things he talked about all the time." He couldn't think of one single specific thing his father had said just at the moment, only the cadence of his voice.

John stood up from the table mumbling, “Accumulated sentiment I guess," before grabbing his jacket and walking out the door without looking back at Sherlock.

When he came back Sherlock wasn't there.

John slept in his own room. Sherlock didn’t come back.

* * *

Towards the end of his shift the next day his phone began buzzing in his pocket. He pressed the ignore button before checking to see who called, surprised then alarmed that it was Harry. He waited for a message - there wasn’t one - before putting the phone back. She called twice more and on the third time he excused himself from the nurses' station and walked into his office, shutting the door and sitting behind his desk before answering.

"Everything ok?" His eyes were shut and he was pinching the bridge of his nose.

"John I told you before there’s enough, you really don't have to do this-"

John opened his eyes. "Do what?"

"Did you want to keep that bookcase that badly? Did _Mum_ force you to do this?"

John stared at the cheap print of the Eiffel Tower his nurses had given him and said nothing.

"She did, didn't she? Oh my God, I'm going to kill her-"

John stood up and leaned forward on his desk, his heart beating quickly. He couldn't follow her. She sounded manic again. "Harry-"

"You don't have that kind of money, I know you don't-"

He froze, Harry’s voice sounding far away. His face got very hot and a wave of dizziness that bordered on nausea washed over him.

 _That's not what happened. He wouldn't do that. That doesn’t make any sense at all. You're_ insane _for jumping to that conclusion._

But it was the only conclusion to jump to. 

He sat down in his chair carefully as Harry rattled on before interrupting her. "She didn't force me to do anything, I wanted to."  

"But where did it _come_ from?"

He blanked, panicking a bit. "Savings."

" _John_ -"

"No, not. Not real savings.” He held his hand out at her even though she couldn’t see him. “I live with a flatmate, have a job. Practically live like a monk.  Those savings.”

"For fuck's sake, I'm not an idiot, stop _lying_ -"

"Harry." His voice was too sharp, but he needed this conversation to end. "Don't say anything else about it. I wanted to, I have the money, I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t.  Ok?"

There was silence on the other end. When she spoke again her voice was thick. "I'm sorry you worry about me all the time."

She began to say something else and John took the phone away from his ear, running his hand over his face and breathing out shakily, before putting it back.

"-promise I'll pay you back when I can. It’ll take awhile."

John closed his eyes tight. "You stayed with Mum after Dad died and I did nothing. I owe you." It had taken years for him to admit that. 

"She hates me, probably would have preferred me not being there. She's such a bitch," Harry stopped suddenly. "I'm sorry."

He thought of the shape her mouth made when she cried, her ridiculously tiny wrists, how her eyes looked when she was drunk.  He wondered if she was drinking, but he didn’t really want to know.

"It's fine.  She is difficult." John barely kept his voice even. "I need to go actually; I'm at work."

She was silent for another moment. "Love you."

"Love you, too." He hung up the phone after she'd started to say bye and leaned his face into his hands, pushing his hair back from his forehead. His nurses laughed outside of his door; it sounded like they were watching something on a phone.

He pulled his mobile out again and opened a text to Sherlock.

He typed _what_ with shaking hands and deleted it, then immediately began typing _where are you_  then deleted it, then shoved his phone back into his pocket and leaned back in his chair, dragging his hands down his face and the back of his neck.

_It’s possible that it wasn’t him. Maybe you rob banks in your sleep. Sherlock’s never caught on._

His body convulsed with horrible, breathy laughter that he could not stop.

_That would make only marginally less sense._

A quick rapping at his door made him jump and bang his knee on the underside of his heavy desk. “Doctor Watson, we have to send this off today.”

He hissed through his teeth and rubbed at the pulsing area above his kneecap before calling, “Yes, I’m coming out right now.”  

For the rest of the day and the tube ride home, he tried to imagine confronting Sherlock and couldn't.

* * *

It was after ten o’clock when John heard Sherlock downstairs. He stared at the door from his chair until Sherlock walked through it, hanging up his scarf and his coat before straightening the cuffs and collar of his suit jacket. His actions were so routine that for a second John thought maybe he'd gone crazy, or maybe that _Harry_ was. But when Sherlock glanced in John’s direction and looked past him without comment John understood that the nonchalance was studied. He cleared his throat when Sherlock passed by his chair. “I know you don’t have that kind of money in your current account.”

Sherlock went into his room and re-emerged sans his suit jacket without responding. John looked over his shoulder after Sherlock as he walked into the kitchen. “Whose money is it?” He kept his voice steady.

Sherlock opened his cabinet and selected two small glass bottles, plus one out of his drawer of the fridge before seating himself in front of microscope.  

“It’s mine.” Sherlock's voice was acid.

John blinked. “Are you hiding it under your mattress or-”

“My mother retains the use of all of it until her death.” 

John's stomach went to ice. “Sherlock-”

“I've never told you how to manage your finances.” Sherlock inserted a pipette in the brown bottle and held it steady a few inches from the slide. “Afford me the same courtesy."

“Afford you the same courtesy?” John repeated. Sherlock continued preparing the slide without answering him. "You just,” John waved his hand, “managed my finances for me, without asking me.” 

"You would have said no." Sherlock slipped the slide under the clips and turned on the light, looking through the eyepiece briefly before adjusting the slide on the stage.

There was a bit of panic in John’s voice when he spoke again. "There is a _reason_ for that." 

"Really?” He adjusted the turet with his left hand. “Which reason would that be?"

John made a noise, inexplicably struggling for an answer. “I won’t be able to pay you back, for one thing-”

“You don’t owe me anything." Sherlock was looking through the eyepiece again.

“Of _course_ I do-"

Sherlock looked up sharply. “No.  You don't.” His shirt had come untucked from his trousers.

_Sherlock's hips moving roughly on him, fingers digging into John's shoulders, breathing in John’s ear._

John blinked rapidly and swallowed, biting the inside of his mouth. "This is by far the most insulting thing and the _weirdest_ thing you've ever done. What the _hell_ is wrong with you?"

Sherlock’s shoulders were rigid as he adjusted one of the knobs on the right. "Go write it up on your blog so some other idiot-”

"Fuck the blog.”

In the quiet that followed, John waited for Sherlock to point out flatly that it was John’s own blog. _Your obsession with me._  Or to laugh at him.

But seconds went by, and the silence grew awkward and then unbearable. 

 _All for that fucking furniture._  

It had been John’s father’s habitual means of punishing him. After being driven home by the police one evening he spent his entire summer holidays working on the enormous bookcase, replacing the screws, fantasising constantly about burning it while fiercely resenting his school mates who’d gone to Italy. 

Remembering this made his aversion to selling it even more puzzling. Sherlock’s assessment of the situation was correct - there was no reason not to sell it, along with the chairs and the dining set. For him there wasn’t even a sentimental reason. But he hadn't wanted to sell it. 

He still didn't want to.

And Sherlock had taken extraordinary pains so that John wouldn’t have to.

John watched Sherlock prepare another slide.  The things he wanted to say to him, the things he didn't want to say, and the things he didn't want to  _think_ collided and then dissolved, until he felt hollowed out and raw.

He went upstairs without saying goodnight.

* * *

A timed floodlight somewhere across the street went dark and the shadows in John’s room changed. He normally closed his blinds as his windows faced east but hadn’t bothered to get up.

He heard Sherlock on the stairs and turned his head towards his door.

The door creaked open only halfway and he could hear Sherlock lingering behind it.

John scooted all the way over to the left side.

Sherlock climbed in and John turned over to face him feeling oddly nauseous, unable to stop his hand from reaching out and touching Sherlock’s face before pushing his fingers slowly through his hair, oily at the roots.

"I'm sorry." Sherlock’s voice was flat. John's hand paused at the back of his head and he looked at Sherlock's face in the dark.

_I love you._

The weight of the thought crushed him. He remained still for a moment, horrified, before pushing his hand weakly through Sherlock’s hair again.

_Please, no._

Sherlock touched John's chest with his fingertips and then John was pulling Sherlock’s face forward and kissing him in a sloppy and uncoordinated way, his hand sliding roughly over Sherlock’s waist and his thigh and up his chest again.

Sherlock exhaled and yanked him closer and then John groped under Sherlock’s t-shirt, over the bumps of his ribs, his broad chest, his stomach. Sherlock didn't stop him.

John's hand paused right over the top of Sherlock’s pyjama bottoms and he stilled his lips against Sherlock’s mouth, waiting for any cue from him to stop. Expecting one.

None came.

It felt surreal to slip his hand under the waistband.  When his fingertips touched pubic hair, he stopped his hand completely, looking at Sherlock as well as he could, his pulse beating in his temples.  The floodlight turned on again; he could _see_ Sherlock.  

Sherlock was still, but not rigid. His hand was hanging over John's waist.

John swallowed and reached blindly down for Sherlock's cock, feeling himself go numb when his hand wrapped around it.

Sherlock didn't didn't make a sound. Didn't breathe.

John had expected holding an erect penis wouldn’t be that strange. He had one, after all. But the angle was completely foreign and he couldn’t _feel_ whether he was holding it right. He had nothing to go on other than Sherlock’s reactions.

John adjusted his grip and felt hideously inept.

When his hand slid up to the tip, Sherlock let out a harsh breath, gripping his shoulder painfully tight. John’s insides flipped and he did it again, feeling Sherlock’s fingers tighten on his collarbone. He realised he was on the wrong side of Sherlock for this activity and crawled ungracefully over to his other side.  Correctly positioned, he pushed Sherlock gently until he was flat on his back and edged Sherlock’s pants and pyjama bottoms down just far enough to touch all of him without straining his hand. This time Sherlock made a low sound in his throat. It went to the bottom of John’s stomach and he put his mouth next to Sherlock’s ear, lightly touching his lips to it to try to draw the sound out of him again.

Sherlock's whole body jerked, his cock hardening in John’s fist, and John pressed closer to him and let his tongue just barely touch where his lips had been on Sherlock’s ear, moving his hand more quickly over Sherlock’s cock. Sherlock breathed harshly but otherwise stayed quiet; John could feel his heels bending and flexing against the mattress with John’s strokes. Soon Sherlock’s hips pushed up underneath John’s arm, thighs and stomach hard as rocks, and he made a noise that approached a moan. John turned Sherlock's head to the side and leaned up on an elbow to kiss him.    


Sherlock's face was hot under his hand and he pulled John down until their chests touched, John working his hand as well as he could between them in this new position. John broke the kiss to lick his palm and he could feel Sherlock’s voice vibrate in his throat when he gripped his prick again.

The floodlight went off and they were in darkness. Their breaths seemed louder.    

When John’s hand was close to cramping Sherlock went silent and rigid as a stone under him. Close. John renewed his efforts, staring hard at what he could see of Sherlock’s face until he felt him jerk upwards, making an almost pained noise as he came hot and slick into John’s fist. John exhaled loudly, pressing his cock helplessly into Sherlock’s hip until Sherlock went to deadweight underneath him, panting slow and loud. Another small noise slipped out of him as John rolled off of him and onto his back, roughly wiping his hand on the side of the bed and shoving his jeans and pants down and off. 

He made an embarrassing noise when he wrapped his hand around his prick – his palm was still damp from Sherlock - and pulled roughly, one thought occupying all the space in his mind. He’d touched Sherlock. Sherlock had wanted it. He’d _made Sherlock come._ He let out a shuddering exhale, the mattress moving underneath his lower body as Sherlock adjusted himself. Because John’s eyes were closed it shocked him when he felt a mouth covering head of his cock.

“Sherlock.” He shot up, stopping just short of grabbing Sherlock’s shoulder. Sherlock was perpendicular to him on his hands and knees, his hair a dark spot in John’s lap and in the flood light he could see the corner of his mouth stretched around - Fuck. _Fuck_.  

“You don’t have to do this,” John blurted. “I mean it, really, don’t-” 

Sherlock’s lips slid drily downwards and John’s sentence trailed off into incoherence.

When Sherlock’s mouth was over halfway down he sucked, too hard, and John grabbed for a pillow hard enough for it make a popping sound. Sherlock paused for a moment and crawled in between John’s legs and when his mouth closed around John again his lips were wet. John’s head dropped backwards and he moaned up at the ceiling.

Sherlock's head bobbed in John’s lap, the passes of his mouth blunt and rough and John couldn’t stop himself from watching, stunned that this was happening. He was already close.

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock didn’t stop, didn’t look at him.

“Sherlock.” Nothing.

In desperation he tapped the top of Sherlock’s head. Sherlock made a noise around John’s cock, and John groaned, not sure that Sherlock understood. He closed his hand in Sherlock’s hair which procured the same reaction and finally resorted to saying in a nearly inaudible whisper, “Going to come.”

Sherlock didn’t move away or slow down. _Wants it in his mouth_. The thought jolted through John and he hardened between Sherlock’s lips. Sherlock was running his tongue haltingly on the underside, breaking his rhythm but John didn’t need much, he was almost there. 

“Sherlock,” John whispered, as one last warning, and Sherlock bobbed as fast as he could go. John gripped his shoulder hard, making pitiful, loud noises as he came, Sherlock sucking him through it until John gasped, “too much,” and Sherlock immediately took his head away.  

When John heard him swallow he closed his eyes, feeling his stomach tighten one last time. _His mouth._ His face. I love you. I love you. John put an arm over his eyes, squeezing them shut and swallowing hard. _Stop it._

John had turned over and was staring at the wall when Sherlock pulled the blankets over both of them, settling in beside him.

_The insane thing with you sister was mostly selfish.  Somehow. And this-_

The thoughts from the evening of Mr. Silva's capture were close again. 

_This is not permanent._

John couldn’t breathe. He got out of bed and walked quietly into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. 

_Get out. Get away. Soon._

He sat on the edge of the tub with his face in his hands, struggling to catch his breath.

John couldn’t leave.  He knew he couldn't.

He would have to wait and watch Sherlock slowly forget about him. Or until Sherlock made it explicitly clear that he didn't feel-

He squeezed his eyelids shut, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. 

_No._

_Before then._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Copied from above (because I really hate not having one):
> 
> My Brit-picker is unfortunately swamped with real life at the moment, so if there is a British person reading this who'd like to volunteer, I'd be much obliged. You don't have to edit at all other than the Brit-picking (though of course if you want to, I'd welcome it!) and in exchange I will beta your story or non-fandom things (school papers, cover letters, etc).


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, Allison (wearitcounts) for gently alerting me to things are physically/medically impossible and for your eagle grammar eye. Bound_in_reason, thank you for the speedy Brit-pick and grammar fixes!
> 
> This would be a good time to reiterate that this fic is Jossy Jossy Jossy Jossed.

John left quietly the next morning.

He tried to push the previous night to the back of his mind at the surgery. Every time a memory slipped through, he lost his breath.

He arrived home to find every space of the worktop covered with beakers. _Between cases._  Sherlock did not acknowledge him from his spot at the kitchen table.  After heating up dinner in the microwave, John opened a book and read silently until he went to bed. When Sherlock climbed in later, John was careful to keep to his side. Sherlock did not close the space between them.

Dinner the next night was quiet, as well - Sherlock seemed absorbed in the fumes emanating from the flask on top of the burner. John thought he had caught Sherlock staring at him from the kitchen, which was not all that unusual, but the deductions that normally followed - about where he had been, who he had been with, what kinds of patients he had treated - were not forthcoming. Sherlock had even averted his eyes when John  turned around. _Probably looking at something I can’t see._ John had switched the telly to something loud and obnoxious and tried not to think at all. 

By the end of the third day, the dread that had waxed and waned since their initial encounter was a constant, dull throbbing that reached nearly unbearable levels at the flat. He stayed at the surgery later than he had to, ate quickly, and walked up to his room, closing the blinds before lying down on his thin mattress. 

Sherlock was talking to himself at a moderate volume downstairs.   It was the first time John had heard his voice in days.  

John turned over onto his side, then rolled over and pressed his face into his pillow, breathing into it a few times before standing up and walking downstairs, almost ashamed, into Sherlock’s room.  

When he heard Sherlock walk through the door and settle onto his side, John’s fists clenched hard enough to hurt his knuckles. 

He wanted to shake Sherlock. He wanted to _throttle_ him. He wanted-  

_Sherlock’s hand reaching across and-_

John’s throat tightened and he rubbed his hand over his eyes, pointless fury collapsing into a hollow spot in his chest. He did not go back to sleep. 

When he turned onto Baker Street the next day and caught sight of the window to their flat, the thought that he had evaded for three days seized him. 

 _All of your communication, your entire relationship, exists only on your initiation_.

His chest felt like it was full of lead.  He fought the lock and walked up the stairs to the flat in a sick daze, preoccupied enough that he did not notice the woman standing next to the window in his sitting room until she spoke. 

“Oh.”

John whipped towards the sound, his heart nearly stopping when he spotted her. 

“Forgive me,” she said quickly.  “You must be Dr. Watson.”

“And you-” His voice was faint. 

“I’m Sherlock’s mother.”

A completely different kind of shock rooted him to his spot in front of the door. She crossed the room carefully and offered him her hand. 

“Marion.”

John took it, staring down at their joined hands so that he could have a moment to collect himself. When he looked up he smiled, aware that it must look overly bright and bizarre.  “Hello.” He could think of absolutely nothing else to say.

“Sherlock didn’t tell you I was coming.”  There was something about her bland smile that reminded him strikingly of Mycroft.

“He did." John found it nearly impossible to swallow. "Completely forgot."  

They stood staring at each other for another moment.

“Would you like tea?” he asked suddenly. 

“Thank you, yes." Her gaze was arcing over the sitting room again.

John frantically rifled through the cabinets for the nice china, finding it in under the sink and covered in dust.

He set the kettle to boil and made quick work of washing the tea set, acutely aware that Sherlock’s mother was by herself in the other room. 

John walked to a part of the kitchen where he was sure he could not be seen and typed out _YOUR MUM IS HERE_ before shoving his phone back into his pocket and making the tea. 

He came back balancing the tray awkwardly, remembering to ask only after they had both sat down, “Would you like something to eat?” Christ, did they even have anything? The only things he could remember in the fridge were the tightly packed lungs stacked in the corner.  

“No. Thank you.”

The silence crept up again as he poured the tea. After he sat down, John scalded his mouth on it just so he would not have to speak.

She looked over her shoulder at the breakfast table, staring at a pile of open newspapers and magazines on the corner. “Do you mind-”

“Not at all,” John said, though internally he cringed.   

People submitted scanned articles of Sherlock to his blog sometimes. John would pick up the hard copy at the corner shop, if they carried it, and leave it on the table for him open to the page where he was featured. Sherlock never looked at them in front of John, but John knew he did.

Sherlock's mum would not know he was the one to procure them, though.

John realised after Sherlock’s mum rose up delicately from her chair that he should have offered to grab them for her. When she sat down again she looked around and set the stack on one of their speakers as sort of a makeshift side table. 

“Does he always wear a suit?” She was frowning down at a small Metro paper.

“Ahm.” It had been the last thing John had expected her to ask.   "When he goes out yeah, generally."

She switched to a magazine, holding it up and close to her face. “Isn't he self-employed, though?" 

John nodded, hesitating a bit before he spoke. "More or less." He had not had to explain the nature of Sherlock’s job to anyone in a while and was out of practise.

She pursed her mouth and stared into the kitchen over John’s shoulder, the newspaper forgotten in her lap. “He always dressed oddly. His brother constantly had to correct him when he was younger.  Children that age can be so cruel.”

John nodded, suppressing an urge to ask ’strange, how?’   He was a bit surprised that she would divulge such a thing to him. She was still staring, unfocussed, when she spoke again. 

“He came home hurt constantly.”   

“He fought?” John asked, then immediately regretted it.  He shouldn’t be asking this.

“Sometimes. Not often.” She rubbed two of her fingers across her lips and looked towards the fireplace. “Once he challenged other children to eat as many hot peppers as he could. Ghastly evening. He made himself terribly sick.” Her voice seemed oddly disaffected for the subject matter.  “He broke his arm challenging some older boy to keep hold of him in a certain position, I can’t remember.” She shook her head and sipped her tea.  

John’s phone hadn’t buzzed in his pocket at all.  Sherlock probably had not even got the text. “I'm sure Sherlock will be back soon. I think he told me where he was going-" a blatant lie “-but I don’t remember, precisely.” 

“I could never keep up with him,” she murmured, putting her tea carefully on top of the pile of papers. “I couldn’t even follow what he was saying half the time he spoke to me. He had to get up awfully early to get to school on time and when I’d wake him he’d sit straight up in bed, reciting some facts about the solar system before he was even awake-”

“The solar system?” John interrupted. 

“He had this giant poster of the solar system on his wall, he was utterly obsessed-”

 _People fill their heads with all sorts of rubbish._  

John swallowed.

“-hardly understand what he does for a living now, when he told us after graduating in chemistry that he wanted to start a private detective business we had no idea what he was talking about-”

She stopped speaking abruptly and looked at John. “Don't you have a website about him?”

John felt his face turning red and thought for a second about lying again. “I do, yeah.  About his job.” 

She opened her purse and, to John’s surprise, pulled out a brand new iPad in a black case.

“My other son got me this, said I’d actually use it but I don’t know how-” She looked up again. “Do you know Mycroft? Have you met him?"

_Information. Nothing indiscreet. Nothing you’d feel ... uncomfortable with. Just tell me what he’s up to._

John cleared his throat. “I have. A few times."

“So they stay in touch?” She was leaning forward slightly, her fingertips pressed together in her lap.

“Oh yeah. They talk." He shifted in his chair. “A lot, actually.”

She leaned back nodding, but not at John. “That’s good.” She turned her focus to the tablet again, flicking her hand in front of it and making a small, irritated noise. “I just don’t know how to use this thing. Could you just find it, if you don’t mind?”

John blinked, and leaned towards her. “Of course.” Once he had pulled the blog up he handed it back to her. To his mortification, she began reading it. 

“More tea?” Her cup was full, but he was desperate.

Thankfully she seemed unaware and nodded, still staring down at the screen. She apparently knew how to scroll with her fingers, but was currently going the wrong direction.

When John was in the kitchen he pulled out his phone again – no text back from Sherlock - and called him. Straight to voicemail. He stabbed the end button and shoved it back into his pocket. He was going to kill him.

When he came back in with the tea she didn’t look up. John set her tea on top of the speaker and seated himself in the chair, looking at a small hole in the carpet trying to think of something, anything, to say. They both looked up when the front door opened downstairs. 

 _Thank God._  

Sherlock ascended the stairs rapidly, stopping dead when he walked through the door.

His mother smiled and closed the tablet, putting it down under her chair. “Hello, Sherlock.”

Sherlock glanced once at John before taking off his coat and scarf and making his way to the sofa. “Go ahead,” he said, stretching himself out and staring up. “I know you’re _dying_ for one.”  

John was unsure of whether or not the question was directed at him or even what it meant, but he saw Sherlock’s mum turn towards him a bit guiltily. “Would you mind if I smoked? I know it’s quite rude now to do inside.”

John waved a hand at her a bit too enthusiastically. “I don’t mind at all.” Sherlock snorted and looked up at the ceiling. 

It took her a couple of tries to light her match. Belatedly John got the ashtray and finally moved the side table over to her, transferring the tea and newspapers, as well.

His mother took a drag, and then looked towards Sherlock on the sofa, fixating on something next to the lamp. “Is that your violin?” She sounded surprised.

Sherlock didn’t answer right away. “Yes,” he said under his breath.

“But you-” She stopped abruptly and looked away from it, taking another drag.

Sherlock turned his head to stare blandly in his mother’s direction. “I was going to, but no one offered anything above four hundred quid. Even cocaine addicts on a bender have standards.” 

Horrible silence blanketed the room. John stared down at the hole in the carpet again, trying not to fidget and _itching_ to leave, before Sherlock’s mother spoke. 

“Do you still play?” Her voice was cold. 

John turned to look at Sherlock. Sherlock was staring down at his feet. He met John’s eyes for a moment, then cleared his throat and stood up, carefully undoing the case and walking closer to the window before he tucked his violin into his chin and positioned his bow.

John was surprised when an upbeat, almost jaunty noise filled up the sitting room. Sherlock’s mother’s face was blank as she tapped her cigarette out into the ashtray. “I’m surprised you remember that.” 

He kept playing without answering her. 

Once he had finished she said, “Oh,” and pulled her purse from the floor into her lap. After unzipping a few pockets she produced a small plastic bag full of white squares - photos, John guessed - turning around to offer them to Sherlock over her shoulder. John watched Sherlock open the bag and look through them, his face betraying nothing, before opening the top drawer of his desk.  

“Sherlock is that _safe_ in there?”

John’s heart skipped. She had seen his gun.

Sherlock spoke through his teeth as he moved the fat yellow envelope and placed the bag of photos on the bottom of the drawer. “Safe from what?”  

She looked agitated. “I don’t even know what's _in_ that-”

That struck John as odd - _there are generally bullets in that_.

“I do,” Sherlock snapped, and closed the drawer a bit loudly.

She blew her smoke up at the ceiling and turned around, finally shrugging. “As long as you do.”   John was fairly certain now that they were not talking about the gun. He feared the return of the silence as Sherlock made his way over to the sofa again.

“Your Uncle Daniel died,” she said as Sherlock seated himself. 

“Good riddance,” Sherlock murmured, stretching his legs out. 

John put a hand on his forehead and looked towards the fireplace, wanting to punch Sherlock, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Sherlock’s mum nodding matter-of-factly at this assessment. The conversation shifted to other dead family members and neighbours, none of whom John had ever heard.  

John wouldn’t have called the atmosphere relaxed, but it got close.

* * *

About an hour later, she checked her watch and mumbled said something about a train, and she and Sherlock stood up together and walked past John towards the door. It did not open though, and after a moment John glanced over his shoulder to see if they had encountered some sort of problem in the entryway.

Sherlock was standing with his arms loosely, awkwardly encircled around his mum. John stared straight ahead again and felt guilty for looking. The door opened and closed a few moments later. As Sherlock walked back to the sofa, John grabbed his laptop from the side table, noticing suddenly the iPad his mother had left underneath the chair.

He snatched it without saying anything to Sherlock, almost running down the stairs and out the door, squinting up and down the street into the bright afternoon light for his mum's light blue coat. He spotted her approaching the cross roads and took off in that direction. When he was halfway he called out, "Mrs." For a moment, the only word that came to mind was ‘Sherlock.’ "Mrs. Holmes," he called after her belatedly. She didn't hear him and turned a corner. He rounded it shortly after her, nearly behind her before he said her name again.

"Mrs. Holmes.”

She whipped around, holding her purse tight and looking surprised to see John.

"Sorry," John said, catching his breath and holding out the tablet. "You forgot this."

She looked down at it for a moment before slipping it silently into her purse. She still looked unsettled. 

Sweat dripped down the side of John's temple and he restrained himself from wiping it off. "I'm sorry for scaring you,” he repeated.

 She nodded curtly, lips pressed together. 

Had he done something to bother her? He supposed he looked disheveled now.

"It was nice to meet you," John tried.   

"And you." There was something stiff in her posture and demeanour.  She stared at the pavement for another moment before looking up, and, most bizarrely, offering John a very strained smile.  

"He seems quite happy." 

John's expression froze on his face. Silent, screaming panic rose in his throat but he could not speak, barely able to stutter, “Bye” as she excused herself and began walking towards the tube stop up the sidewalk. 

He almost walked into traffic on the way back to 221.

Of course she would think that, why wouldn’t she? John wrote a blog about Sherlock’s job. He lived with him. 

_And you’re fucking him._

But was not what exactly what she thought, of course.  She thought they were-

John closed his eyes tight before working on the lock of the front door.

* * *

When he walked into the flat again Sherlock was still on the sofa. John put his keys on the worktop and sat heavily in his chair, grabbing his laptop off of the side table again. 

“I’d forgotten she was coming.” Sherlock’s voice was flat. 

John shrugged at his laptop, feeling very tired. “It’s fine.” 

“What did she ask you?”

“Nothing, really. We weren’t alone for that long.”  John realised that this was the first conversation they had had in days.

“She asked about Mycroft.” As he said this, Sherlock’s palms pressed together on top of his chest. 

John tilted his head and conceded, “She did.”

“Did she ask if we were still best of friends?” There was a touch of sarcasm in Sherlock’s voice.

“No,” John said, trying not to show his surprise. “She asked if you kept in touch, though.”

“What did you say?”

“The truth. Pretty regularly.” 

Sherlock snorted a little. “What else?”

“She asked if I’d met him.”

Sherlock glanced at him. “What did you say?”

John shrugged at his laptop. “I said I had.” 

Sherlock continued staring at John from across the room.

John held his palms up, irritated. “I left out the part where he kidnapped me and offered me money to spy on you.” 

Sherlock's laugh startled him. “God, John.” John turned to face him and saw Sherlock run a hand over his face. “Are you worried about my other family members coming out of the woodwork now?” Smiling with teeth, Sherlock was nearly unrecognisable.  

“A bit.” John could not remember the last time he had seen Sherlock laugh.

“I can assure you the rest of them don’t speak to me and additionally live a safe distance away.”  

“Well, that’s a relief. Or, not." John shook his head a bit. "Sorry.”

Sherlock laughed again. “You’ve met my mother and my brother, of course it’s a relief." 

“Your mum wasn’t so bad.” For a second he felt guilty about what Sherlock’s mum had said, if she was implying what he suspected. She must know that Sherlock was gay, but he literally could not imagine Sherlock ever having that conversation with his parents. 

_He had it with you._

Sort of. 

He wondered if it had gone similarly with his parents. Maybe they had caught him snogging someone.

The idea both confused him and, humiliatingly, made him a bit jealous. John cleared his throat. "Mycroft looks a lot like your mum.” 

“He hates it when people say that.” Sherlock’s voice was smug. 

“You don’t, though. At all. Do you look like your dad?” 

Sherlock did not answer immediately. John realised that he might have inadvertently strayed into a delicate subject. He did not know anything about Sherlock’s father, other than the fact that he was dead. 

“The word ‘dead-ringer’ has been used more than once.” There was something odd in Sherlock's voice. Almost wooden. 

_They didn’t get along._

John looked down for a second, then over his shoulder into the kitchen. "Did you really need _that_ many lungs?"

A discussion of Sherlock’s latest experiment occupied a good part of the next hour.

* * *

_John is with Sherlock in the laundry room of his parents’ house. Sherlock is very close and smiling widely, his face taking up John's whole field of vision. He's talking - John cannot understand what he's saying - and his hands are sliding slowly up and down John's back. John's insides roll and curl and he pulls Sherlock gently closer, his waist warm under John’s palms._

John opened his eyes to the sitting room of 221B, confused. He wiped away an impressive line of drool off of his chin and turned around, wincing at the crick in his neck. Sherlock was facing away from him, bent silently over a beaker on the hob.  

John  went up to his room to change. His chest felt heavy again as he settled under the blankets in Sherlock’s room. 

* * *

John woke up later in complete darkness, certain that he had heard something. 

Sherlock jerked next to him under the duvet, and he realised the sound had been Sherlock. 

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock made a noise like he was in pain. John closed a hand firmly on his forearm and shook him once. “Sherlock,” he said, louder. 

Sherlock was speaking now, but it was the nonsensical and oddly-cadenced speech of sleep talk. John moved his arm to Sherlock's shoulder and pushed sharply.

Sherlock gasped and shot upright, almost knocking John off of the bed. “It’s ok,” John said loudly, trying to wake him up. “It’s fine. You’re ok.” 

Sherlock swallowed loudly and turned to face John, his breath fast. He stayed in the same position, staring, even as his breathing began to level off.

John's heart beat hard.

When Sherlock leaned forward and pressed dry lips against John's, relief hit John like vertigo.

They ended up lying down, John on top of Sherlock and tilting his chin upwards to lightly suck on his neck.

Sherlock made a noise in his throat as John worked his mouth down to Sherlock's collarbone. Sherlock's erection was poking him just under his ribs. 

Without thinking John moved himself between Sherlock’s legs and hooked his fingers around Sherlock's pants and pyjama bottoms, pausing. After a moment Sherlock lifted his hips slightly, and John pulled them both down and off, his heart pounding hard enough to make his hands feel weak. 

He settled between Sherlock's legs again, the dark shape of Sherlock’s cock bobbing directly in front of his face. 

_Go on. Suck him off. You've been doing it figuratively for long enough._

John squeezed his eyes shut  _stop_ before gripping Sherlock, lightly running his hand up and down. Sherlock hissed and flinched underneath him. 

_Even Sherlock's mother knows._

John leaned over and hesitantly took him into his mouth, sliding awkwardly down the length.

_Or she thinks she knows, she doesn't really, she doesn’t know that Sherlock doesn’t feel-_

John paused for a moment at that thought. Sherlock’s hands twisted the sheets next to John’s ear and John could hear faintly hear him saying "ah."

John shut his eyes and sucked hard, swallowing Sherlock down until he gagged. Sherlock made a noise and John slid his tongue along the underside of Sherlock's cock, using his hand to touch what his mouth could not.  It took a lot of concentration and kept every other thought away from him.

After a few minutes John's jaw was hurting, but Sherlock seemed close. 

“John.”

The sound of his own name made John moan around Sherlock’s prick and rut against the bed, though he recognised it as a warning and groped for Sherlock's hand to let him know he understood.  When he tried to pull his hand back, Sherlock gripped it tightly.

After another minute or so Sherlock went still and his prick stiffened in John's mouth, and John braced himself for the taste. It was bitter, but not awful, and John swallowed it, every noise that Sherlock made making him squirm. 

As soon as John took his mouth away, Sherlock sat up against the headboard, pulling on John until he was practically sitting in Sherlock’s lap.  Sherlock pushed roughly on the waistband of John’s boxers and John made short work of them, Sherlock's hand closing around him as soon as John had straddled him.

To his surprise, Sherlock kissed him. John moaned into Sherlock's mouth and held him close until he came, shuddering, all over the front of Sherlock’s t-shirt. He caught his breath as Sherlock wiped them both off before sagging back against the headboard.  

John tried to swing his leg over so that he could collapse on his side and lost his balance, but Sherlock caught John by the shoulders before he fell off the bed. John took a deep breath and adjusted himself on his knees, trying not to lean into Sherlock while regaining his balance. Sherlock kept his hands on top of John’s shoulders, his thumb running softly over the right side of his John’s collar bone.

After John had climbed off of him and pulled the duvet up, Sherlock settled in behind him, close enough for John to feel the heat from his body. John floated off into sleep, the weight of the past few days falling away.

* * *

The next night when John got home from the surgery, Sherlock was leaning over the kitchen table. The flasks had been moved to the worktop to make space for what looked like five arms cut off at the elbow. 

John frowned a bit at one with mint green nail polish as he opened the fridge. “This isn’t quite what I meant when I said I could use a hand around the kitchen sometimes,” John murmured as he grabbed a beer. 

When he closed the fridge, Sherlock was looking up at him with a blank expression.

John shrugged as he opened the bottle and took a sip. “I thought that one was pretty good.”

He could feel Sherlock’s eyes on him as he walked back into the living room and turned on the telly, a tiny flare of nervousness making his stomach feel a bit cool.

“I trust the brawling footballers sufficiently recovered under your care.” 

John paused with his beer to his mouth before turning around. “All right, how could you _possibly_ know that? You hardly even looked at me.”  It was very difficult not to smile.  

Sherlock smiled down at the arm sticking out of bowl of blue liquid, and told him. 

* * *

John stayed up later than he meant to that night talking to Sherlock and went to bed feeling almost happy.

When he began nodding off, the door to the bedroom opened and Sherlock walked inside, half illuminated by the wedge of light filtering in from the living room.

John turned over so that he could face him, squinting and puzzled. Sherlock never went to bed this early. Sherlock stared at him a moment before closing the door and putting them back into darkness.

John viciously suppressed the jumping, pathetically hopeful thing in his throat until Sherlock climbed in bed and covered John’s mouth with his own, slipping a hand in between them and palming John through his boxers. 

They had sex almost every night that week. 

John had the sensation every morning when he looked at Sherlock that he was being pulled slowly under. 

* * *

When John woke up on his day off, Sherlock was not there and John felt a twinge in his chest. 

“Stop,” he whispered, barely audible. He got up and made breakfast; the kitchen was mercifully free of body parts.  John reckoned Sherlock had gone to Barts again. 

He sat in the sitting room with a mug of tea and stretched his legs in front of him. The ashtray was still on the side table – he had forgotten to empty it. He looked past it towards the desk, and saw that the top drawer was slightly open.

John looked out the window, then back at the drawer before putting his cup down on the carpet and making his way over to it. He put his fingertips on the surface of the desk and glanced once more around the room before he opened up the top drawer, setting the yellow envelope aside and carefully lifting out the bag of photos underneath it.

The person in the first photo looked very much like Sherlock, save for the surreal detail that he looked happy and comfortable holding a baby.

He held the picture closer to his face and smiled a bit; the baby looked very serious.

His smile faded as he thumbed through the rest. They were all of Sherlock and his father. Every single one. He paused on the last one - Sherlock playing his violin with his father watching from a sofa - and looked towards the fireplace.

 _Not just wrong, but dead wrong -_ he doubted highly that Sherlock’s mum would have given him a stack of photos of his father if they had not got on. 

He stacked them back and put the pictures back into the bag with unease, positioning them carefully in the drawer before putting the yellow envelope on top, remembering belatedly that the side with “Sherlock” scrawled on it had been facedown. Not that it mattered - Sherlock would know, if he ever looked at them again, that John had seen the photos. There was no point in trying to hide it.

As he closed the drawer, he noticed a spot of blood on one of the legs of the desk that he had missed after Sherlock had cut his head on the table.  John looked up suddenly.

Mr. Jones and his junkie son. Sherlock's odd concern over John’s dad’s furniture - _of course it was partly about him_. Fucking Anderson could have figured this out. 

He looked towards Sherlock’s empty room then down at the floor. 

_You don’t know him at all._

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allison (wearitcounts), thank you for your beta HEROICS, particularly your gay sex pro tips (heh). CrackshotKate, thank you as always for your Brit-picking awesomeness. Caroline (avawatson), thank you for your ludicrously fast and last minute eagle eye.
> 
> This chapter borrows heavily from the ACD story "The Five Orange Pips."
> 
> Beautiful (nsfw) artwork for this chapter by purrlockholmes aka doctormysweetie [here](http://purrlockholmes.tumblr.com/post/90860955889/then-sherlock-lifted-his-head-off-the-pillow-and) (she's currently taking requests, bless her.)

 

John panted and adjusted his hands so that they weren’t sliding on top of any pillows before moving his hips again. He was on his knees between Sherlock's legs, thrusting alongside Sherlock’s cock inside Sherlock’s slick fist. They’d left the bedside lamp on.

 “Wait just a second, stop," John gasped.  Sherlock released them and John let his head drop between his shoulders, closing his eyes and forcing himself to relax.  They had already stopped once for him.   

As John breathed, he felt Sherlock adjusting underneath him, opening his thighs a bit wider.  When Sherlock reached between them to guide John's cock between his arse cheeks, John went absolutely still.

They remained that way for a moment, John staring at Sherlock’s chest and completely immobile until Sherlock canted his hips up and let them drop.  Then John’s stomach plunged.

Almost unconsciously, John shifted closer to facilitate the movement and Sherlock's knees bent and spread wider to accommodate him before doing it again. And again.

Sherlock's eyes closed as John reached an unsteady hand between them to position his cock so that it was nudging against Sherlock’s entrance.  Sherlock’s left hand gripped the back of John’s thigh.

“Do you want to do this?” John’s mouth was dry, his heart pounding hard enough to make him light headed.

Sherlock nodded without opening his eyes.

"We need a condom." Even as John said it, Sherlock was tilting his hips up and pulling John forward and John was pushing and Jesus _Christ_ , it was _tight_ - 

_This is not risky for you.  It’s risky for him._

John pulled away from him abruptly, nearly tripping over Sherlock’s trousers on the floor before hobbling, naked and cold, up the stairs to his room.

Sherlock’s bedroom door squeaked loudly on his return and John shivered as he climbed on top Sherlock again, kissing him while reaching his arm out blindly, feeling the edge his phone and the glass of water on the side table and setting the condom between the two.

They moved carefully together this time, almost awkwardly.  John thought the moment might have passed, which gave him a tiny measure of relief.

But after a few minutes, Sherlock pressed his palms into John’s lower back, spreading his legs wide enough that one foot dangled off the bed, tilting his hips up again.  In a haze, John reached over for the condom.

_This is about to happen._

He had to roll off of Sherlock and flatten himself against the mattress to reach the lube Sherlock had accidently knocked onto the floor. He opened the packet with weak hands, the back of his neck going a bit numb as rolled the condom over himself over himself and followed it with a generous application of lube.

Sherlock’s chest rose and fell quickly as John repositioned himself between Sherlock’s bent knees. Something in the corner of the room creaked loudly.

John planted his hands on the bed and leaned over him, Sherlock’s ribs brushing against the inside of his wrist before he pushed against resistance until oh God, _oh God_.

Sherlock snapped rigid under him, gripping his shoulders tight. John immediately pulled out.  “I’m sorry.” He ran his sticky hand haltingly up and down Sherlock’s arm. “Sorry,” he repeated. 

Sherlock swallowed, breathing through his nose.

John guided one of Sherlock’s hands between them and wrapped Sherlock's fingers around his own prick, sliding it up and down once before letting Sherlock's hand move on its own.

John slid into him inch by inch, stopping completely each time Sherlock’s hold on his arm became a vice grip. When his groin finally pressed flat against Sherlock's arse, he let out a shuddering breath and adjusted his weight onto his hands so that their foreheads hovered inches apart. Sherlock’s knuckles lightly brushed against John’s stomach with each stroke.  His jaw was clenched tight.

Unexpectedly, Sherlock’s eyes opened.

John could only stare down at Sherlock, paralysed, until Sherlock closed them again, pressing his fingers into John’s thigh. John swallowed and focused on Sherlock’s throat as slowly pulled out and then pushed in again, listening to the change in Sherlock's breath, feeling his hands adjust on John’s arms as he stopped and repeated it, stopped and repeated it until it was a rhythm rather than isolated movements.

They fucked quietly, almost surreally slow.

John looked up when the headboard began to tap lightly against the wall and then glanced down again, watching his cock disappear into Sherlock’s body, unable to believe what was happening.

“Sherlock.” He hadn’t meant to say it. It had slipped out.

Sherlock pulled John’s neck down and then his mouth was against John's, fitting their lips together, his hands moving continuously over John’s head. 

John’s chest tightened as they kissed, squeezing him until he couldn’t breathe. He broke away and inhaled shakily and stopped moving, his hips sagging down into the mattress as he carefully he took Sherlock’s face in his hands.

Sherlock had gone completely still underneath him.

John ran his thumbs above Sherlock’s ears and waited, teetering.

Then Sherlock lifted his head off the pillow and loosely cupped the back of John’s neck.  John shut his eyes as Sherlock’s mouth touched his, and he slid one hand behind Sherlock’s head to support its warm weight. Sherlock’s arm tightened around his back.

On an inexplicable impulse, John broke the kiss and pushed Sherlock’s hair away from his forehead. Sherlock blinked rapidly up at him, swallowing. 

He looked like a different person.

John traced Sherlock’s hairline with his thumb and Sherlock closed his eyes, his teeth digging into his lower lip. 

Sherlock was always slipping away. When they weren't touching, this wasn't there. 

_And what does that tell you?_

John straightened back and began pushing into him again. Sherlock’s mouth opened and his head fell back onto the pillow as he moaned.

_You already know what that means._

John gripped the underside of Sherlock’s thighs tight and fucked him hard. Sherlock’s stuttered sounds merged into one low, constant noise punctuated by the sound of the headboard knocking loudly against the wall.

_You love my cock, you need it, you need me, you love me, love me, just be in love with me please-_

Sherlock went rigid under him. John grit his teeth, trying to delay the orgasm that had almost interrupted them multiple times. 

_Come on._

Sherlock made a sharp, loud sound, and John forced himself to slow down, gasping at the smooth squeeze and release around his cock as Sherlock came all over his own chest and stomach.

He waited only a few moments after Sherlock had stopped before thrusting into his body too hard, too quickly but Sherlock held on tight to John’s arms and lifted his head off the pillow to watch him.

 _He wants me to come, wants me to come_ in him _._

John cried out and buried his cock deep, squeezing his eyes shut as he pulsed inside of Sherlock and filled the condom. 

When it was over he sagged on top of Sherlock, raw and heavy and wet with sweat. Sherlock’s ribcage rose and fell under his.

 _I love you_. John felt it rising in his throat, brimming painfully over. _I love you._

John gripped Sherlock’s face with both hands and kissed him hard and Sherlock’s mouth opened immediately.

John could hear the words in his own voice.  It made his heart beat sharply.  

_Say it. Just say it. Maybe-_

A loud rattling sound startled both of them. John broke the kiss, whipping his head towards the source. The noise was coming from Sherlock’s trousers on the floor that had nearly tripped him up earlier.  Or more precisely, his phone in his trouser pocket. When the buzzing stopped it was punctuated with a shorter sound for a voicemail, and then the room was silent again.

Neither of them moved.

After some embarrassing fumbling with the condom, John rolled onto his back, staring up at the shadows on the ceiling as Sherlock slid gingerly out of bed and pulled the phone out of his pocket, holding it up to his ear to listen to the message.

It sounded like Lestrade.

After a minute or so, Sherlock said, “Get dressed,” and put the phone down on the table. He wiped his body down with kleenex before pulling a new shirt and trousers from his wardrobe, the plastic dry cleaning bags crackling and squeaking as he tore them open.

John didn’t move from his spot on the bed until Sherlock had gone into the living room. 

Lestrade didn't call him for small things. This would be good for him. Sherlock hadn't had anything interesting in weeks.

John picked his trousers up off of the chair and pulled them on slowly.

“Why did you _wait_?” John could hear Sherlock pacing. “Has anyone touched the body?”  

John picked up the used condom and the kleenex before tossing a couple of stray pillows back onto the bed.

“Is anyone over there _sentient_ -”

John turned off the lamp, putting the room in almost total darkness save for a yellow sliver of light coming from the cracked door. He paused in front of the lamp, sliding his palm up the doorframe. From here he could see the condom wrapper glinting behind the bedside table. John thought he'd put it next to his phone. Sherlock had long arms, though - probably knocked it off.  Like he had done with the lube.  Like he'd done with his own computer last week. 

“Fine, tell me exactly where it was, as it happened to you-” 

John let his hand fall, and looked back towards the dark irregular lumps in the mattress where the sheets and blankets were bunched.

"We'll be there in twenty minutes, _don't_ move them."

John was sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark when Sherlock called his name from the living room.  

* * *

On their way to Bart’s later on that night (technically it was morning), Sherlock's phone rang.

As soon as he answered it, John heard a low voice speaking quickly on the other end. 

"I've already been consulted." Sherlock was calm, almost casual. 

The person on the other started again, and this time Sherlock leaned forward, his hand balling into a fist his lap as he listened. When he spoke though, his voice retained the same calm tenor.

 “No. Stay there.” 

Sherlock gave a few more monosyllabic responses before he hung up and knocked on the glass, barking a different address at the driver.

"Who was it?"

"Phillip Harding. Son and nephew of the two murdered sisters. Got a strange little note this morning before the bodies were found; he has no idea what it means.  He read it to me, sounds like coded language." 

“Related to the murders?” 

“I’d say so.”  Sherlock folded his hands in front of him, staring at the headrest. “We need to talk to him now.”

“Why?”

“Talked about going to his aunt’s; he’s a bit skittish.” 

“Can't imagine why.”

Sherlock lifted his shoulder to concede the point but then added, “He won’t have to worry long."

The corners of John’s mouth turned up. Sherlock remained hunched forward and perfectly still, eyes fixed on something only he could see.

_White forehead, pale, blinking eyes, throat bobbing slowly._

John turned away from him, staring straight ahead.

* * *

_Two weeks later._

John leaned carefully across the passenger seat with his torch, balancing on the headrest to look closely at the man in the driver's seat.  His mouth was open, his eyes wide and unseeing. Dried blood spattered the windows and a dark and shiny pool of it had collected under the seat.  He’d been shot in the neck from the back passenger side. The handwritten message that had stuck out of his mouth, addressed to the Met, was already in an evidence bag. The man was Philip Harding’s brother.

When he stepped away from the car he saw Donovan staring at Sherlock, backlit by the lights the Met had set up. “You knew Stoller had come back in the country and you didn't tell us."

“Your dramatic incompetence was what allowed him to leave the country in the first place," Sherlock said from the pavement, half underneath the car, before he stood up. The vehemence in his voice surprised John.

“Well,” Donovan motioned to the car, “now someone else in this family is dead.  Not our incompetence, was it?”

Edward Stoller had broken with the British National Party in 1988, favouring a more extreme immigration policy than “voluntary resettlement whereby immigrants and their descendants are afforded the opportunity to return to their lands of ethnic origin.” He’d taken it personally when one of the major organisational forces of his movement – Philip’s mother Elena – left.  Unfortunately for Philip’s family, he seemed as adept at orchestrating the extinction of his family as he had been on evading charges of other violent crimes the organisation perpetrated. 

As Sherlock and Donovan stared at each other silently over the top of a car, an officer with a camera awkwardly manoeuvred around John to climb into the passenger side.  As the flash lit up the inside of the car, it started to rain.

On the way back to the flat in the cab, Sherlock stared straight ahead, steepling his hands underneath his chin for ten minutes before pulling out his phone and dialing a number. “Do you still have the option of going to your other aunt’s?” Sherlock asked in a low voice.

The response on the other end was loud.

“Later. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Go right now.” Sherlock hung up the phone, slipping it into his pocket and staring out the window with his fist to his mouth.  He didn't speak the rest of that night. Or the next one.

* * *

_One week later_

John hung up his coat, stepping carefully around the concentric circles of books and laptops fanned across the living room on his way to the kitchen.

The toast he’d left out for Sherlock on the worktop that morning hadn’t been touched. He binned it and put two new pieces of bread on the same plate, then glanced towards the living room and pulled out a second plate and two more pieces of bread, as well as the bowl of leftover tuna salad in the fridge. He left one of the sandwiches one on the table and carried the other into the living room.

Sherlock startled when John put the plate on the speaker next to his chair. Before John could speak, Sherlock had hurled the plate at the fireplace. It exploded against the wall next to the lamp, the pieces scattering over the wood and carpet.

John stared at the mess for a moment. At this point in a case he could normally move around like a ghost. He looked back at Sherlock, clearing his throat silently. "Look, if you’re stuck-"

Sherlock's head snapped up and John held his hands in front of him, keeping his voice quiet. "You haven’t eaten anything in days. It might help with-” John made a vague gesture with his hands. 

Sherlock pursed his mouth and turned his gaze towards a cluster of dents in the wall next to the fireplace.

“Your brain is just like every other organ. I know you've convinced yourself otherwise, but it doesn’t function as well starved.”  

“What would you know about it?” John noticed for the first time that Sherlock had bitten his lower lip almost raw. “Your mind’s practically vestigial.”

Glancing towards the now open-faced sandwich on the rug, John said, “And what spectacular feats has yours accomplished today?" 

A fraction of a second after the words left his mouth he remembered that the Met had dredged a body out of the Thames that morning. The note stuck inside the mouth had been addressed to Sherlock. The shift of responsibility at the scene was subtle, but unmistakable. Sherlock had accepted it. 

John shifted his weight, an apology on the tip of his tongue, as Sherlock slumped back into his chair. But instead of speaking, John kneeled to collect the bigger pieces of the plate before quietly sweeping the floor and carpet. 

As he emptied the dustpan into the bin he glanced towards Sherlock again. He was bent over, elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands slowly over his eyes.

John didn’t much care how this one ended anymore.

* * *

But Sherlock did eventually catch up to Edward Stoller. 

Sherlock had figured out Philip had gone back to his own flat, despite their warning that he stay at his aunt’s. But Edward Stoller had figured that bit out first. 

As soon as Stoller's body had hit the floor Sherlock leapt over him, striding quickly towards the silent lump in the corner of the room.  

John had crouched down, watching Stoller gurgle in confused panic, clutching ineffectually at his throat until his movements became lethargic, finally stopping all together. The pool of blood spreading out from the exit wound on his back touched John’s shoe.

John looked across the dim room, towards the corner where Sherlock was knelt down. He realised Sherlock was murmuring Philip’s name. 

John watched the small motions of Sherlock’s arms, watched him flatten himself on the ground, then pop up again. Eventually Sherlock went completely still and leaned away.

They sat in silence over both bodies until John heard distant sirens, and when he heard Lestrade's voice downstairs they both stood up. 

When they returned Sherlock sat silently down on the sofa. John hung up both of their coats and went upstairs to his own room, smelling cigarette smoke before he went to sleep.

When John left for work the next morning, Sherlock was in the same place, his suit jacket unbuttoned. The ashtray on the floor next to the sofa was full. 

John worried at random intervals during his shift about Sherlock falling asleep with a lit cigarette in his hand.

On his way home, John made an impromptu detour to Sherlock’s favourite curry place.  He waited in a dark and noisy alcove of the restaurant for an hour before the girl at the counter yelled, “Watson.” 

He arrived home to find Sherlock had changed into his pyjamas. He hadn't shaved yet. 

John shook the bag a little so that Sherlock could hear it and put it on the worktop, but Sherlock didn’t turn around.

John ate some of the curry out of the styrofoam in front of the telly, watching the news in silence before turning it off and leaving Sherlock alone in the living room. 

This time John slept in Sherlock’s bed. The scent jarred him, the memory of what happened last time he and Sherlock were there together unavoidable. He masturbated silently in the bathroom and when he climbed back in bed, he stayed away from Sherlock’s side.

It rained hard the next morning and on the tube the smell of wet, stale smoke in his jacket almost made him gag.

At work, John tried not to think about the fact that Sherlock hadn’t come to bed.

When he arrived home, Sherlock was still on the sofa. It might have been the harsher light from the corner lamp that John had turned on that morning to look for his keys, but Sherlock's face looked alarmingly gaunt.

John scanned the fridge for any sign that Sherlock had eaten. Nothing looked disturbed.  He checked the bin for fast food or sweet wrappers. Nothing.

John turned to stare at Sherlock in the living room, his heart rate picking up, before he closed the fridge and grabbed a pizza from their cramped freezer, forcing himself to stop looking as he turned the oven on.  

He’d ask him if he wanted a piece. He’d insist that Sherlock eat it. He’d shove it in his face and tell him to open up and fucking chew or else- 

A deep, muffled cough from the living room sent John striding blindly in that direction, stopping a few feet behind the coffee table, oddly out of breath. Sherlock didn’t acknowledge him at all. "What are you doing, Sherlock? Hm?" John could barely control his voice. "Are you trying to commit the world's most inefficient suicide?"

Sherlock adjusted on the cushion and took another drag of his cigarette.  

“For what? This one got solved. You’ve had plenty go _un_ solved.”

“I’ve never lost a client,” Sherlock said through clenched teeth.

“He wasn’t your client.” Technically.

Sherlock did not respond. John stared at deep scratch on the corner of the table whose origins he was certain Sherlock had lied about, and grit his teeth.  "I know you’re not _this_ broken hearted over the loss of life, so I have to assume this episode is some _stupid_ pride thing, though it’s beyond me what you hope to-"

“You like this."

John went abruptly silent. Sherlock turned his head to look at him. 

“You like when you have to remind me to eat." His eyes wandered over John as he spoke.

John blinked for a moment before running a hand over his mouth and letting it drop. “You think I enjoy watching you starve yourself?"

Sherlock turned his gaze back towards the wall and put the cigarette in his mouth. "No.  I said you like when you have to remind me to eat." His said around a lungful of smoke. "Just like you chastise me for being socially unrepentant, but, really, you don’t much like it when you think I'm getting on with someone else a bit too well.”  He exhaled. “Or not minding a press conference so much."

"Fantastic, Sherlock. Truly."  The shock of sudden, harsh exposure – he _knows_ – had transmuted almost instantly into fury. "Any other brilliant observations percolating in that mind of yours?”

Sherlock turned sharply towards John again as he stubbed his cigarette out.  John recognised the look on Sherlock’s face.  It had never been directed at him. 

John's heart beat hard.

"I’m not your first homosexual encounter.”

_Peter is laughing, but his grip on John's wrist is tight and he pushes it roughly away from his cock. John recoils and sits up straight in his chair; instantly numb._

“Didn’t go well, did they?  The other ones, I mean.”

John blinked rapidly as Sherlock lit another cigarette and turned it sideways, rolling it back and forth in his fingers. “You could have done me the courtesy of harbouring a more interesting secret-"

“You’re losing your touch.” John couldn't keep the malice out of his voice.

Sherlock paused, the cigarette suspended between his thumb and middle finger.  

“I’m not closeted.” John stumbled over the word and hated himself for it.  "I tried to jerk off my uni flatmate once. But that’s it.  That’s all of it, before…” he trailed off and gestured with his hand towards the sofa, feeling small and pathetic. 

Sherlock’s face registered nothing.

“I’m not completely straight. But I wasn’t lying, when I said I wasn’t gay.  I like women. I _prefer_ women.”

_Really, John it seemed like you rather ‘preferred’ your cock up my arse, or mine in your mouth, it certainly seems like you 'prefer'-_

"I know."

John looked up.

Sherlock had said it quietly.  He was staring ahead at the wall again, his shoulders slack and his back resting against the arm of the sofa. He put the cigarette to his mouth again and took a pull.  

His neck was so thin John couldn’t look at it anymore and he searched for something else to focus on instead: the full ashtray, the magazines stuffed onto shelves and covering every surface of every piece of furniture, the bullet holes, the small grease stain on the wall from the tuna sandwich, countless other casualties of Sherlock’s uncontrolled enthusiasm.

“You need to be needed.” 

Sherlock’s voice caused John to physically startle. 

“That’s why you’re a doctor. And a soldier.” Sherlock stopped. “That’s why you live here.”

“That’s not why.” Why were they back to this? 

Sherlock turned to him.  “Then why do you?”

The answer occurred to John with more clarity than he had ever allowed.

_Because I believe that I matter more to you than the work._

His looked away from Sherlock quickly, his eyes passing over the same things they had a moment ago - monuments to a staggering devotion.

But not a devotion to John. 

John felt something rise in his throat as he caught sight of the cracked bedroom door, the trouser leg sticking out of the room.  

_You should know that I consider myself married to my work._

John swallowed.  When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse. “I don’t know.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you [Allison](http://wearitcounts.tumblr.com) (wearitcounts) for being the best type of beta, i.e. the one who will tell you when something needs a second pass. That's the type of advice that's definitely harder to give than receive, and you don't know how much I appreciate it. Thank you [Caroline](http://avawatson.tumblr.com) (avawatson) for your incredibly thoughtful commentary that prompted me to completely restructure so many scenes in this one, and they're most definitely the better for it. 
> 
> My Brit-picker was unavailable for this chapter, please feel free to correct me on any Americanisms you find. Any errors, for that matter. I revised a lot after my betas took a look.
> 
> Also, I had thought this was going to be the last chapter, but it definitely is not.

When John opened his eyes the next morning, he was disoriented for half a second as to why he was looking at his own closet and ceiling before he remembered.

 _I don’t know._  

A helplessness close to horror gripped him, and he didn’t move at all until his alarm went off.

After his shift, he paused in front of a small and crowded Thai place down the street from his clinic, watching the waiters squeeze through the narrow spaces between the bench-style tables before walking inside.

At the flat, he went directly up to his room and watched television shows on his computer with headphones in until he fell asleep with it on his chest. 

The next few days faded together in a dull haze. 

He managed to completely avoid Sherlock.

A week after John started sleeping in his own room, he opened the door to leave for his shift and nearly collided with Sherlock behind the door. Sherlock averted his eyes and John smelled Barts and a recent cigarette on him as Sherlock squeezed past. John listened as Sherlock put his keys and his phone on the breakfast table, pulling the door shut behind him in time to watch Sherlock toss his coat over the bannister.  

On the train, he swayed with the dense mass of commuters and stared blankly at a safety diagram above one of the doors, grappling with something akin to shock.

 _I need to move._  

* * *

After his shift, he headed towards a busy pub a few streets behind their building where he and Stamford sometimes met. It was bright and lively, and he sat himself at the centre of the bar in front of a television that no one was watching. He ordered a beer, pulling up the classifieds section of the Times as well as Craigslist on his phone.

He’d expected to find nothing, but as he scrolled, he saw plenty of suitable options. None in central London. Flatshares, mostly. But there was an adequate selection in his price range.

He stared at the cricket match on the telly for a few minutes with a brief stab of panic.

Then he finished his beer, and sent out a few enquiries.

* * *

_Want to meet up sometime this week so you can look at the flat?  Current flatmate moving out in three weeks.  if you’re interested, he wants to sell his bed with the frame and some shelves._   


John shoved his phone back into his pocket and felt a tightening across his ribs, forcing a smile as he opened the examination room door.  Mrs. Bryan looked at him nervously from the table.

Later, while waiting at a red light across the street from the tube, he pulled out his phone and typed  _Yes, when?_

The phone buzzed in his pocket as he descended into the station, but he did not check it.

The white-tiled walls felt claustrophobic for the first time in his memory. 

* * *

When John arrived home, Sherlock was bent over his microscope at the table. John passed by the kitchen without stopping, but then paused at the base of the stairs and forced himself to turn around.

Sherlock didn’t look up from his eyepiece as John walked into the kitchen. 

John stood a few feet in front of the table, and then made his way towards the dish rack, grabbing his striped mug and walking over to the leftover pot of tea Sherlock had made. After pouring himself some, he leaned against the sink awkwardly, his knee cracking when he shifted his weight.

“I found another place. Available in three weeks.” Speaking to Sherlock again felt surreal. They hadn't spoken in over two weeks.   “How long do you want me to keep paying rent after?”

Sherlock adjusted one of the knobs and spoke without looking up. “You’re out of this lease as of right now.” 

Silence stretched out between them, Sherlock’s chair squeaking minutely as he shifted. John robotically swallowed tea.

Finally, Sherlock leaned back in his chair and pulled a book off of the tall stack in the middle of the table, flipping to a dog-eared page and turning the book sideways, presumably to read the cramped handwriting in the margins. 

_Why are you still standing here?_

John abruptly set the mug on the worktop and walked out of the kitchen, trying not to climb the stairs to his room too quickly.  He felt transparent.

* * *

Within a week  of his move-in date, John realised that he had not prepared at all. Not in the slightest. He needed boxes, some packing materials; he needed someone to help him move. Sherlock had helped him the first time.

He walked past the shop where he could buy everything he needed and lingered outside the door, watching clusters of students filing out with gigantic bags of packing peanuts and tape.

His new flatmate wasn’t much older than a student. A young teacher. Quiet. As quiet in his habits as John, as different from Sherlock as could possibly exist-

The pavement tilted underneath him and John leaned against the shop front, losing his breath.

 _What the fuck is happening, what_ _had happened,_ what the fuck had happened.

John forced air into his lungs.

 _You knew it would be this way, from the very first time._  

He stared at a petrified wad of gum on the glass and closed his eyes briefly, listening to people maneuvering around him on the pavement.

_Liar._

When he opened them again, he caught one of the shop clerks watching him warily on the other side of the door before she looked away and re-lit her cigarette.  He stood up straighter in an attempt to look less like a person in the middle of a nervous breakdown.

_You’ve given him every opportunity to tell you to stay.  He hasn’t._

John swallowed and looked up, squinting into brassy late afternoon light. 

_Let him go._

A stark image of Sherlock’s face staring up at him with his hair pushed back made John’s breathing painful again. 

Before he was fully aware of what he was doing, he was walking away from the shop and back towards the flat.

He stopped short after opening the living room door. Sherlock was lying on the sofa with his shoes off, a pile of open, facedown books on the coffee table. He was reading one of them with one hand, holding a mug of tea in the other.

John’s heart jumped into his throat as he settled himself into his chair and pulled out his phone, pretending to read news articles until he was down to ten percent battery. When he got a five percent warning, he absently laid the phone on the side table and let his back touch the chair for the first time since he arrived home.  Numbness crept over him.

_You’re a fucking idiot._

John gripped the arms of the chair tight as as Sherlock dropped a heavy book onto the pile on the table and picked another one out of the stack.

 _What are you waiting for him to say, what are you still_ doing _here?_

John abruptly got out of his chair walked towards the desk, crouching down to scan the dusty piles of books stacked underneath.  A dull roar in his head blocked out all coherent thoughts.

"What are you doing?"

John almost bumped his head on the underside the desk at the sharpness in Sherlock’s voice. "What does it look like I'm doing?" He stood up fast enough so that bright spots swam in his vision, and he had to blink through them to read the titles on the bookshelf next to the mantle.

“None of those are yours."

John fought a fierce compulsion to yank everything off the shelves and onto the floor. When he spoke, his voice was almost even. "Humour me and let me check."

"Do it some other time." John heard the floor creak as Sherlock stood up.

John pulled the spine of an old medical textbook read the title, but it wasn’t his.  The roar in his head was louder now. "Why?"

"Because I don’t want to be distracted by your pointless shuffling." Sherlock had walked closer.

John slid the book back into its place hard enough to rattle the bookshelf. “I’m moving in a week.”

“And?” There was an edge in Sherlock’s voice. 

John turned sharply. "Pardon me, I forgot for a moment that the entire _fucking_ world revolved around you." 

Suddenly Sherlock was in his face. "You _need_ something to revolve around.  You are _incapable_ of creating meaning in an ordinary life on your own, I could see that from the first hour I spent with you.”  He was nearly spitting. “I hope for your sake that your next flatmate is a desperately lost cause so that you can spare yourself some years of aimless drifting.”  Sherlock’s voice had risen loud enough for Mrs. Hudson to hear.

"Fuck you, Sherlock,” John hissed. Something was fraying inside of him, pushing out of his chest and up his throat. "You are a cancer in the life of every person who knows you.  I wish that I didn’t know you.  I wish to God I’d never _met_ you-”

A deafening pop startled him and John watched as the pieces of the of the mug Sherlock had hurled onto the floor skittered across the wood.

When John finally looked back up into Sherlock's face, the expression he saw clearly reflected froze him to his spot.  

For long moments after Sherlock’s bedroom door had slammed shut, John remained where he was and stared at it, breathing heavily, his mind turning one fact over and over again.

_He hates me._

The thought made John oddly jittery.  No.  Not jittery.   _Giddy._

He sat down in his chair and rubbed his eyes before steepling his hands in front of his face. 

_Just because you make each other miserable doesn't mean anything._

He pressed his thumbs hard into the bridge of his nose.

 _Yes it does_ , a small voice whispered to him.

The giddiness returned and he viciously attempted to ignore it, suppress it, until he realised it'd gone dark outside and he could hear rain.

He looked up in the direction of Sherlock's room again, his heart hammering.

_Don't._

But he was already getting out of his chair.  

Terror whited out his mind as he pushed Sherlock's door open, his hand shaking a bit on the knob as he pulled it shut behind him.

Sherlock was a dark, silent shape against the headboard.

John took careful steps towards the mattress and sat down on the edge; the rain had picked up outside and now tapped loudly against the window panes.

“I didn’t mean,” John began in a high, thin voice, then stopped and tried again.  “You’re not...” John trailed off and put his hand on his face, squeezing his eyes shut tight enough to see bursts of color. “I don’t want to leave.” The last part fell out of him in a rushed whisper. 

Everything in the room took on a surreal quality as John waited for Sherlock to respond.

Sherlock didn’t say a word. 

John jerked upwards off the bed, but Sherlock’s hand closed around his wrist in an iron grip and pulled him back.

John moved towards him before he realised what he was doing, crawling back onto the mattress and touching him clumsily, an involuntary sound slipping out when Sherlock’s mouth covered his.

John was pushed onto his back and as Sherlock nimbly unbuttoned his shirt, John fumbled with the buttons on Sherlock’s before working open his trousers, pulling all of Sherlock’s weight on top of him as Sherlock struggled to get John's undershirt over his head.

_You’ll never be able to leave._

Sherlock's heavy hips began dragging over John’s, and John grit his teeth.

_You could move to Australia.  You could never speak to him again.  But you'd still be here._

Sherlock’s prick stiffened and John groaned into Sherlock’s mouth, clinging to him. 

_This is a room with no door._

Sherlock's mouth attached to John’s neck, and John's eyes closed as his head dropped back onto the pillow.

_But not for him._

John opened his eyes, going a bit still, even as Sherlock moved his mouth sloppily down John’s chest.

_He’ll get bored._

Sherlock viciously worked John’s pants and trousers down and off of him and then he was hovering over John again, staring down in the faint light into his eyes, touching his face.  

_And what will you do when that happens?_

John’s vision blurred and he abruptly rolled over onto his stomach.  Sherlock was completely still behind him.

John took a deep breath and reached blindly back for Sherlock’s hand, tugging it to no avail. He tugged again, a bit more forcefully, and Sherlock’s hand went stiff in his grasp.

“It’s going to hurt you.” 

John heard the muted panic in Sherlock's voice and ran his thumb gently over the inside of Sherlock's wrist.  “I know.”  

Later, when the head of Sherlock's cock was inside of him, John found himself pushing back too quickly even though the pain made him gasp.  He wanted the pain.  When his arse finally touched Sherlock's groin, he felt Sherlock adjusting his slippery hands on John's hips before moving again.  As they started fucking, the pain fell away, leaving behind a blind and senseless need that compelled John to reach back to feel Sherlock's hands, his knees, his legs, any part of him within reach, any part that John could touch-

Suddenly Sherlock pulled John upright, gripping him tightly around his ribs, his chest hot against John's back.  

John felt like he was being cut wide open.

“Don’t leave.” Sherlock’s voice was a choked whisper in his ear. 

For a moment John could not speak.  His nose and eyes stung sharply, and when he blinked, it made his eyelashes wet. “I won’t.” 

Sherlock’s hold on him tightened.  

_But you will._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you need more John/Sherlock nsfw (and fluffy) fanart and fic recs on your dash, you can follow [me](http://a-causidicus.tumblr.com)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I moved to a new city, started a job where I'm working crazy hours, blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit. I wanted to finish this a lot sooner, the chapter isn't even that long. Thank you so so so SO much for the comments. It means so much to me. I hope you enjoy this chapter. 
> 
> Eternal thanks to my betas (who are amazing writers): Brit-picker [CrackshotKate](http://crackshotkate.tumblr.com) (I still owe you a Christmas present, don't think I'm letting that shit slide) and my fantastic beta eagle-eye [Allison](http://wearitcounts.tumblr.com) (wearitcounts) who I had the INSANE PLEASURE of meeting recently.

The next morning John woke up late, alone in the flat, which wasn’t in itself a bad thing. He had no idea what he would have said to Sherlock.

John arrived at the clinic grateful to see a full waiting room and harried nurses, and voluntarily worked through lunch to stay on schedule.

At two-thirty in the afternoon, he walked to one of his lunch spots down the street from the clinic, almost unrecognisably empty, and ordered his usual. 

It was impossible not to think about Sherlock. 

As he took a second bite of his sandwich, he realised with a start that needed to send his never-to-be flatmate a note. And, considering the timing, first month’s rent. 

He wiped his hand on his serviette and pulled his phone out of his pocket, setting it next to the sandwich wrapper and searching for the most recent text from the teacher, which was an assurance that he would be at the flat all day to help when John arrived with boxes. Uneasily, John began typing.

_My living situation has changed._

He paused, staring at the message on the screen for a moment before leaning back in his chair and picking up his sandwich again, staring at the sparse foot traffic outside as he ate. 

He forgot about the unsent text until he was standing outside of the tube station after his shift, attempting to read his email. The messaged popped up after he unlocked his screen, and, after staring at it a moment, put the phone back into his pocket and descended the dirty stairs of the station.

As he opened the door to the flat, he realised he had stupidly, _stupidly_ __, left his chequebook on the worktop and sure enough, a vivid iodine stain had soaked through the entire book.

The extras were in the desk drawer in the living room.

As he made his way across the carpet, something crunched under his feet and he paused a few feet short of the drawer when he realised it was the remains from Sherlock’s mug.

_You’re a cancer in the life of everyone who knows you._

John shut his eyes tight, his fists balling next to his side.

_Don’t leave._

He was still for a moment before unclenching his hands, and crossing the remaining feet the desk.

The folder containing his important papers was underneath his gun at the back of the drawer, and he put both the gun and the yellow envelope on top of the desk before reaching back for it.

He opened it on the desk and had to shuffle through his tax papers, national insurance card, passport, birth certificate, and copies of his passport before he uncovered the small stack of chequebooks at the bottom.  

John couldn’t remember when the papers had migrated to the drawer with his gun, but none them had gone missing or been burned since he’d started keeping them there.

He replaced both the manila folder and the gun before opening to a blank cheque, realising as soon as he picked up his pen that he couldn’t remember the teacher’s last name. Irritably he pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened the abandoned text again.

_My living situation has changed._

He stuffed the phone back into his jeans and put both hands on top of the desk, staring over his shoulder towards the sagging bookshelf, the skull on the mantle, the same goddamned beakers that had been sitting on the kitchen table since his first goddamned day in this goddamned flat-

 _Nothing’s changed, nothing’s going to change, what the_ fuck _are you doing-_

The sound of the door opening downstairs caused John to whip around, his arm knocking the chequebook and the envelope off the desk in a single swipe. 

John didn’t move, didn’t breathe, until he recognised the tread of Mrs. Hudson’s footsteps. When he heard the faintest sound of the telly below him, he looked down at the floor.

Half of the contents of the envelope, which, as far as he could see, consisted of mostly flattened, folded pieces of paper, were strewn across the carpet.

As he knelt down and began raking the mess into a loose pile, he noticed what looked like an old ticket stub - just black smudges on white square at this point - a ring that looked like a wedding band, and a wrinkled 2nd place rosette.  He picked up the ribbon and turned it over in his hands.

It was hard to imagine Sherlock willingly holding onto anything condemning him to 2nd place. 

One of the pieces of paper in the middle of the pile had unfolded a bit, revealing some green around the edges. He picked it up, hesitating a moment before opening it.

A crayon stick-figure family of four was in the middle of the page as well as a dog, maybe a cat, impossible to tell. “To Dad, From Sherlock” was written in the upper corner. Sherlock had drawn himself taller than Mycroft.

John looked up at Sherlock’s chair and remembered Sherlock’s mother sitting there, looking at this desk after Sherlock had opened the drawer.

_I don’t even know what’s in there._

She had to have been talking about this.

John put the picture carefully down, and almost compulsively unfolded another piece of paper, immediately recognising Sherlock’s pencil scrawl in the margins before his eyes skimmed over the first three lines. It was a eulogy for Sherlock’s father. Quickly he folded it back up, and immediately began fitting the papers back into the envelope until it bulged around the sides again, slipping the tickets, the ring, and the ribbon last, an acidic feeling washing over his stomach as he replaced it carefully in the door and shut it again, staring through the space between the curtains. He watched the pigeons eating on the wrought iron ledge across the street for a moment before walking carefully to his chair and sitting down.

He was still there when Sherlock came home. John realised belatedly he hadn’t turned on any lights after it’d gone dark, but Sherlock didn’t comment.

John’s eyes were drawn to the desk drawer again as he listened to the clacking sound of Sherlock rearranging the flasks John had displaced earlier while looking for his chequebook on the worktop. When the floorboards behind John’s chair creaked, he abruptly stood up, saying vaguely over his shoulder that he was tired.

He went into Sherlock's room and shut the door behind him, stripping down to his boxers and t-shirt in the dark and lying on the bed with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling, the contents of the envelope taking up all of the space in his mind.

Probably what Sherlock’s father had kept over the years. Gave it back to him when he died. Sherlock added to it, he supposed, putting in all of the things that reminded him-

_That's how it would look._

John grit his teeth against the thought.

_Tangible. Material. Obvious. Overflowing out of him and crammed into every available space-_

John turned over onto his side and yanked the duvet up to his chin.  

_He doesn’t love you._

A shrill noise from the living room made John bolt upright, though it shouldn’t have - he’d heard it countless times before.  

He lay back down on the bed with his blood still beating in his temples and attempted to ignore the shrieking violin music for almost three minutes more before ripping the blankets off of the bed and stumbling into the living room. 

He had to close his eyes momentarily against the hard light - Sherlock had turned on only the corner lamp with the ripped shade.  The corner of the room was bright; black shadows stretched up the other three walls. He was playing in front of the far window, still in his suit.  A sense memory of Sherlock’s fingers digging into his hips made John’s stomach drop.  

"Can you play something that sounds less like a dying cat?" John snapped.

“You’re not in work tomorrow.” Sherlock readjusted his grip without looking at John. "Also, as I recall, I put you on notice at the beginning that I like to play my violin at odd hours."

_Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other._

John’s insides involuntarily tightened at the memory and he looked down at the corner of the rug for a moment. When he glanced up again, he saw that Sherlock had turned around, was watching him.

_You need to get out of here._

As John turned to leave, Sherlock put his violin on the table hard enough to leave a twangy echo. The vacuum of silence left behind was startling. 

Sherlock was leaning over the breakfast table now, palms flat on the surface. "You said you don’t want to leave. But you’re lying.” He was speaking to the bookcase. “You’ve wanted to leave for a long time.”

The muscles of John’s face, of his whole body, froze.

Sherlock turned his head to meet John's gaze. “I suspect you haven’t contacted the teacher yet to let him know your arrangement with him was off.” 

John said nothing, didn’t move, but Sherlock responded, “Good.  Don’t. Because I’ve changed my mind." There was something uncontrolled in his voice. "I don’t want you here.” 

The room seemed to recede away from John, and his gaze drifted to the coffee table on the other side of the room.

“Why?” John's own voice sounded thin.

“Because this is a waste of time.”  

Willing himself not to, John looked at Sherlock again.

“You prefer women.” Sherlock’s gaze was still fixed on the bookcase. “You'll remember that at some point.  Some client. A nurse, another doctor."

John blinked at him, the words not registering.

“It will happen very quickly. You’ll be married within a year.”  A muscle in Sherlock’s jaw moved and he swallowed. “You’ll be flattened by it.”

John could only watch as Sherlock’s hands made fists on the table, then flattened out again before he said, “The rational part of you already knows that. That’s why you want to leave. Why you’ve wanted to leave.” 

Sherlock turned his head then to look at John.

“So let me ask you again – what's keeping you tethered here?”

John couldn’t speak at all. His chest felt tight.

Sherlock remained hunched over the table, silent, watching him, until he abruptly slammed his hands against the surface hard enough to rattle the violin. “Goddamn it, what are you _doing_ here-”

“I love you.” 

Airless silence descended over the room.

John stared stupidly at Sherlock as a car slowed down somewhere across the street.  

_Please._

Sherlock's face looked naked, his hands hanging by his sides. 

_Please, Sherlock._

The car started up again, pulling away slowly from the curb until it was silent again. Sherlock did not speak.

_You were right._

_You knew._

_You knew, you knew, you_ knew _-_

He hadn’t realised he was halfway to the stairs until he heard his name and turned around, feeling as though the floor were eroding under his feet.    

“I know.” John’s voice sounded pinched and strange in his ears.

"Know what?"

"That you don’t.”  John’s throat seized around the word.  “You don’t.”   

A void was waiting for John on the other side of this conversation.   

 “What do you mean?” Sherlock’s words were toneless, robotic. 

“I know what it looks like.” John trailed off, _the envelope,_ but out loud he said _,_  “You love,"  John swallowed and touched his hand to his forehead before blurting, "You love your work.”

Sherlock’s face registered nothing.

John was sinking through the floor. “You love your work so much you call yourself _married_ to your damn work-"

The desk drawer opening and slamming shut cut John off mid-sentence. Mutely he watched Sherlock dump the contents of the yellow envelope onto the carpet, picking through it with sharp, jerky movements. Just as suddenly, Sherlock bolted upright again, crossing the room fast enough to make John flinch before Sherlock dropped onto his knees, jerking John’s hand away from his body and pushing something cold and smooth over his finger.

John numbly touched the underside of the ring with his thumb as Sherlock clamoured to his feet, his hands coming to rest on John’s shoulders. Sherlock was breathing like he’d been punched. When he spoke, his voice came out hoarse.  

“You don’t know.” 

A muscle in John’s throat jumped and he suddenly could not look at Sherlock anymore, staring between their feet at the gritty white patch of broken mug he’d smashed into the carpet earlier.  

“You have no idea,” Sherlock’s voice cracked and he swallowed. “How much.”  

The words pulsed in John's chest, across his skin, in his brain.

_You have no idea._

John turned his face as far away from Sherlock as he could, unable to stop his mouth from contorting.

Sherlock’s fingers dug tight into his shoulders. “I don’t _want_ you to know-”   

Then John was kissing Sherlock hard, his heart pounding against his chest so fast that it was making him sick.

John tried to hold onto to what Sherlock had just said, but the words were already fading, slipping away from him. He pushed Sherlock towards the bedroom, and when he closed the door, Sherlock’s hand closed around his arm in the dark, pulling him towards the bed until they were on top of the mattress. John adjusted himself backwards on his elbows as Sherlock crawled over him, his face hovering above John’s. The familiarity of Sherlock’s weight, his smell, made John’s insides feel bruised. He draped his arm over Sherlock’s back, lightly touching him on his neck at the very edge of his hair.       

Sherlock buried his head beside John's neck on the pillow and slid his arms underneath John’s shoulder, wrapping them up until their chests pressed together. John could hear Sherlock’s pulse beating in his throat.  

_How much._

Suddenly John’s mouth was twisting again, and when Sherlock’s hand pushed John’s hair off of his forehead, tears slid out of the corners of his eyes into his hair, tickling his ear.

 John tried to swallow and couldn’t. 

“John.” Sherlock’s voice was insubstantial.

John bit the inside of his mouth hard and closed his eyes, but it was useless, he was crying. “It did happen very quickly."  

 _You have no idea._  

“I was flattened.” It was almost impossible for John to get the words out.  "I always am."  

Sherlock went completely still over him, and when John heard Sherlock’s breath hitch his hands curled helplessly against Sherlock’s back.

“Sherlock-” 

“I love you.”  Sherlock’s voice was thick, almost unrecnogiseable. 

John's grip on Sherlock went slack and he blurted, "Say that again."

_I’m not going to survive this._

Sherlock said it again, and this time John tried to hold onto it.  To hold onto him.  

  _I don’t want to survive this._

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you need more John/Sherlock nsfw (and fluffy) fanart and fic recs on your dash, you can follow [me](http://a-causidicus.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Cover Art] for causidicus's "Manifest"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3181025) by [livloveel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/livloveel/pseuds/livloveel)




End file.
